I have to agree that I feel eBay is probably being misused. Some people make their living off eBay, just like some make their living off spam and spyware. They know the system and they know how to beat it. Stinks for the rest of us. Like every other facet of the Internet, eBay was so nice before it started being (potentially) abused by greed.

They should try to eliminate fake accounts, like msaeger said, but that may drive away potential buyers and sellers, which hurts their business.

And ooh, I hate electronic sniping (bids placed at the last millisecond by paid websites). Sure, if a human wants to schedule their day so they're in front of the computer for the last 5 minutes, then fine. I do that all the time. But tanstaafl's idea for variable ending time seems great to thwart "eSniping". Ah, but esnipers will find a way around it; it's their business, after all.

And a "weighted" feedback system would be great, like mschrag said. I hate checking someone's feedback to see that they sold hundreds of key chains to score that high feedback. And is it out of the question to assume people are selling items to themselves; to their alternate accounts? Why not. I'll bet that big eBay scammers have a massive web of buyer and seller accounts, giving eachother feedback to prepare for "the big hit" where they Dutch a bunch of plasma TVs. Seems the same concept as a single "company" registering thousands of "spammy" websites, all linking to eachother to increase their Google rateing. They know the system, and they know how to abuse it.

So, I just do what I've always done on eBay: Never buy anything I could get in a store, and only buy from "the normal guy who's been the only owner and now he's selling it to free up space in his basement." I have pretty good luck with that (yet keeping my fingers crossed that my $10 DSL modem comes in so I don't have to pay evil Sprint $200 for one).