I noticed this mentioned in at least one other thread, a buyer threatening to leave negative feedback if the seller didn't do something he wanted. Someone mentioned eBay was working on fixing this problem. Any information or updates available?

How could they fix it? I pay attention to the feedback and really pay attention to how the negative feed back was written. Sometimes you can tell it was two pissy personalities instead of a real problem by the nature of words they use.

Yes, the feedback is a very important part of the process. I have great reservations about bidding on anything if the seller has chosen to "hide feedback" - what are they hiding? Why would anyone straitforward have any reason to hide their feedback?

This is why the feedback system doesn't work. If eBay actually would remove feedback that they decide was given unfairly that would be one thing, but all they do is make it a neutral and add a flag to the users feedback that says "1 negative feedback has been removed."

This still makes people wonder.

Feedback can't be trusted anymore either. I bought a $500 item from somebody with 100% positive feedback and over 1,000 total feedback, only to never receive the item, and find out later that the guy had been the victim of a phishing scam of some sort. Basically his perfect account was stolen and he had hundreds of negatives shortly after. Just goes to show that even 100% positive doesn't mean anything if the person is an idiot and lets their account get stolen.

Eww. Yeah, letting your accout get stolen is bad, for sure. One nice thing about being a small-time ebayer is that nobody WANTS my account LOL!

Wow, somebody stole his account? That REALLY sucks! No, the feedback system is far from foolproof, though eBay likes to pretend that it is foolproof. I suppose there's no better system that I can think of, though.

I guess it's important to save those emails where people threaten to leave unfair feedback, and just tell them that you'll report them to eBay, with the proof they've left in their emails. Hopefully that'll keep most people for leaving unfair negatives.

When i leave neg which is rare i also put. Please email for more details. This really puts the nail in the coffin and lets other buyers know its a clear warning if they need to ask about it.

The unfortunate thing is, it's not all that unusual. My account was hijacked by someone who probably used a brute force hack to get my password. He then listed an auction for an expensive laptop. Lucky for me, I caught it within hours and the person hadn't changed my password. I cancelled the auction, reported it and had eBay remove the listing altogether. So, have a tricky password and still check periodically to make sure you're not having an auction you don't know about.