In 19 years of buying stuff on ebay, I only had 3 bad experiences that I can recall.

Once, I won a Simpsons promo card for $ 6 and the seller would only take money orders. I sent it to him in Florida. I never received the card, and the seller never responded to emails.

Another time, I won a card for just a few dollars, and a person contacted me saying that she was the seller's wife, that he was sick and she could not find the card. They refunded my money.

In the last case, the seller was in Canada with pre-order DVDs. Said it would not ship for 90 days. Never received it, and no response to emails. Paypal told me that I waited too long to complain, that I should have done so within 30 days. I lost $ 25.

In all cases, the sellers had no negative feedback

My problems with eBay, and the reasons I barely try to use it anymore, actually have little to do with any sellers or bad transactions that I have experienced. It is the eBay rules that frustrate me, as I'm sure along with many others, whether buying or selling. In the last couple of years eBay has really cracked down to hinder communications between the parties and restrict how you are allowed to pay for items or even pick up BINs. Forget about shipping options if you want to forego the expensive routes. This is why eBay is losing business to other sites like Amazon, iOffer and other individual markets. The instances of bad transactions just add to the dissatisfaction.

But you can protect yourself from bad sellers if you follow a few guidelines. By all means check the feedback, but know that the feedback scores are tilted to be better than what they should be. The number of transactions processed per month is a better indicator. Also review the other items a seller has posted. If the prices are too good, it the supply available is too big, if there are unlicensed items mixed in, if there is no indication of an actual business or if the type of items sold are all over the map, you have potentially a wonky seller. Proceed at your own risk. If you do not engage in wishful thinking, you can avoid most of the situations that get buyers in trouble.

As for sellers, I really think it is harder on eBay because they are at the mercy of whoever hits the BIN or makes the highest bid. They don't find out until afterwards if that buyer really is a good customer or someone who is trying to rip them off. And eBay is more likely to side with the buyer, at least for the first few claims.

So eBay is a great platform for connecting buyers and sellers, but it was better in the early days when it didn't try to control every aspect of the transaction and had less buyer protection rules that just hinder good sellers and good buyers, while still not stopping the bad sellers or bad buyers.

Sounds just like the Democrats!