I've had a generally good experience on eBay as a seller and buyer since 1999, but have only recently come across something that's bad and seems fairly widespread.
Some of you experienced eBay folk may already know about feedback padding, but it's new to me.
Check out item #110195479515 or item #110171368265
Basically, these are items that cost one cent and have no shipping costs and they allow an eBay member to quickly get positive feedback - positive feedback farming.
These transactions are almost always private as well, so always be suspicious of buyers with all private feedback and try to cross-reference the feedback with the sellers/farmers of the feedback. You can usually find a public feedback from one of the farmers if you scroll through all of their feedback.
eBay has a policy on feedback manipulation, but to my chagrin they do not really enforce it as they have loopholes in their policy.
I had a "buyer" from France with -0- feedback the day they won my auction. I only accept PayPal from int'l buyers and they came up with all kinds of excuses why they couldn't use PayPal . . . and they wanted to send me a money order.
I said no.
In just a few days, this buyer has farmed over 100 positive feedbacks and has won almost $10,000 worth of stuff and has at least tried to pay with a money order on two of those transactions - I contacted those two sellers.
I also reported these events to eBay and they have so far not taken action. It's a shame that some folks will probably get burned by this and eBay is so far ignoring my warnings.
I believe in caveat emptor, but it would be nice if eBay would more aggressively go after the feedback farmers. And, I am not totally soured on eBay; for the most part my eBay experience has been excellent.
Sorry for the long rant, but I had to get it out.
Best and be careful out there!
Kurt