Actually, it's pretty simple - if the deal falls 
through with the first person, you get your money 
back for end-of-auction fees and go sell to the 
second person. Then Ebay gets nothing. That's 
what's ticking them off.

Another thing ticking them off is when there are 
multiple items available. Example: One common 
thing for Hard Rock Cafe pin dealers to do is to 
hold an auction for a given pin. Then at the end 
of the auction, e-mail the other bidders and 
offer them ALL pins at their high bid amounts 
(assuming the bids were high enough to cover cost 
of aquisition of the pins). Ebay gets nothing for 
these transactions either.

See, Ebay DOESN'T want communication between the 
seller and buyer. They want only enough 
communication for a transaction to be conducted 
and then they want the parties to part ways. That 
hasn't been happening and so Ebay has decided to 
try to police what buyers and sellers say to each 
other. For example, if you want to write to an 
Ebay member now, you can't e-mail directly. Your 
e-mail gets sent through Ebay. (Where you can be 
damn sure it WILL be read before being sent on.)

I'm sure there must be a creative way to rephrase 
that same idea about e-mailing to be considered 
as a backup bidder. I'll have to look up some of 
Axis Mundi's recent auctions or something and see 
how they're phrasing it now.

One other thing I found interesting - I just now 
saw an auction that had a web page address in the 
description. When clicked, it brought me to an 
Ebay-generated "error" page. Thankfully, I'm a 
computer geek and can translate this:

"403.2 Forbidden: Read Access Forbidden

This error can be caused if there is no default 
page available and directory browsing has not 
been enabled for the directory, or if you are 
trying to display an HTML page that resides in a 
directory marked for Execute or Script 
permissions only."

Into this:

"We are @SSholes and have deactivated the basic 
web ability for you to simply click on a web 
address if you want to be taken there. We didn't 
bother to tell anyone that they need to use 
actual html script to create a link to their 
pages, because we know it will take people a 
while to figure out that we've messed with this 
and in the meantime we can screw them."

I'm also more than geek enough to just cut and 
paste the address while I give Ebay the finger. 
(*evil growl*)

I really do think that Ebay is setting up for a 
crash very soon. There WILL come a point that 
enough sellers don't want to put up with it. Less 
and less will be listed and that will be the end 
of the Great Online Garage Sale.

Many EXTREMELY Sharp Smiles,
--Drac ^_~