Unfotunately John Donahoe took over ebay at the beginning of the year and ruined it for both sellers & buyers.

His background is consultancy (he is a consultant) which really sums it up.

His plan is called "disruptive innovation" I kid you not.

eBay’s Disruptive Innovation, How’s that workin’ for ya? — GenuineSeller

He is trying to turn it in to shopping mall online/an Amazon lite. By forcing these changes through he has broken ebay and taken away the hobby selling/family feel to it.

The commission fees are so high that you can't afford to sell things at the bargain price you could last year, so buyers are losing out. They've virtually forced free postage so that they can get commission on the postage, which is obviously just bumped in to the selling price. Sellers then cut corners to try and cut cost, where as before they could afford to ship by decent methods

Both buyer and seller are forced to use Payapl, which is the scammers charter, but protects neither and they moved out of their UK office to Luxembourg to make it impossible to sue them in UK courts.

Took away negative feedback for buyers, so scammers can carry on buying things and then put a paypal claim in for item not received. Even if you send it recorded delivery, Royal Mail is using so many temp workers that they don't bother to get signatures, just put the item with the letterbox.