From May, eBay will change the feedback system so that sellers cannot leave neutral or negative feedback for the buyers they deal with, yet a buyer can rate the seller any way they like. This is to entice back selllers who have been burned by buyer feedback. But...this is exactly the point - for feedback to work it has to be frank and two-way. Watch this space - there is going to be a fairly dramatic drop-off in eBay users. Anyway, below is my ten cents' worth on an Australian blog.

We have an online home services directory in Australia called homefriday.com.au, which was partly inspired by the transparency promised by an eBay-style rating system. We have applied similar logic, but tried to improve upon it. I always thought the feedback on eBay was a lot of crap overall. "AAAAAAA+ trader" - puleeeaase. Sounds like you bought your second-hand Tupperware from God!! Anyway, we encourage householders to give detailed and specific feedback to service providers and allow one right of reply. This avoids ongoing battles - we heard some doozys about au pairs on one site - but gives a person a chance to justify or defend themselves, or describe extraordinary circumstances. We have found that it is pretty clear to users what the situation is and who is being unreasonable. Of course, get a chain of negative SP feedbacks and you are toast - the free market in operation, as it should be. This also applies to householders - if you keep bagging SPs, no-one is going to be that keen on working for you. Real eBay feedback which helps make important buying/selling decisions is now screened by the endemic and banal nonsense that passes for user comments. FFFFFFF+ to you, eBay.

Here is a link to the Sydney Morning Herald blog story http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives/random_access/017412.html