No more checks allowed on eBay  

I honest think you're all nuts
Despite all the raving against eBay, where the hell else are you going to find so many great items cheaper than you'd pay locally, if you could ever find it locally?

I don't use it that much,...
I don't use it that much, especially to sell. Selling on ebay is a pain. For the regular super mass produced modern stuff, I prefer to find it locally by chance. I seem to appreciate it more that way. That way, just because someone else has a Saarinen armchair, they don't have THE Saarinen armchair that I found in a junk store on accident .... more fun.

Yes
eBay is obviously the largest online auction / marketplace for both buyers and sellers, but the fact that they are essentially a monopoly and that sellers are at their whim (e.g. steadily increasing fees, flawed feedback system) is both frustrating and disheartening.

November 1 of this year will...
November 1 of this year will be the tenth anniversary of my registering on ebay to buy and sell. One thing I've noticed is that every time they increase fees or make more than a minor policy or site change, there is a wave of bitter complaints about how they don't care about sellers, how they are greedy, and how they are surely orchestrating their own ruin which is imminent. And many of those who complain swear they are going to quit using eBay and move to another auction site.
So far, eBay is bigger and more successful than ever. I think most people are happy enough with it and that those who complain are a very small but loud minority.
I had a few problems with people not paying after negative feedback for buyers was disabled. But they all coughed it up after they got strikes against them for non-payment. Sellers can block anyone with two or more non-payment strikes, which I did. I've had two blocked people try to bid on things since then (yes, sellers can view these stats!).
The alternatives for me are to sell on Craigslist to a MUCH smaller market, or to sell at auction locally and give 30-50% of the selling price to the auctioneer as commission. Or sell at consignment shops and give 30-40% to the shop as commission. Or open my own shop, I guess---but the cost of that would be even higher.
So eBay's actually still a pretty good deal as far as I'm concerned.

Yes, it's called a backlash,...
Yes, it's called a backlash, and it's not always just so much whiney din. When a business model morphs in such a way as Ebay has, it disgruntles its audience, creating fissures which gradually undermine how it is perceived. Ebay may be bigger than ever, but it's probably from the glut of multiple item BIN auctions for wholesale radar detectors or LED flashlight keyfobs. The issue here is the quality of merchandise and buyers is not what it once was -- not to mention the interface. It isn't fun anymore. Nobody's saying it was ever the best of all possible worlds -- it was never, at any stage, a perfect scheme -- but to say that ebay has made strides for the better -- at least where the end user is concerned -- is just untenable. Maybe even contrarian. The real snag is that ebay is the only game in town for what it offers. That needs to change.

google
you would think google.com is the only entity that could contend with ebay at this point... I'm surprised they haven't attempted something like auction style listings

Finch...it's been tried
(your comment)
The real snag is that ebay is the only game in town for what it offers. That needs to change.
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Yahoo had an auction website, but it was never very well organized and subsequently, hardly anybody put anything good up for sale.
It's like Amazon....both they and eBay appear to be the only places on the web to buy anything (new and/or used), but that's not only due to their huge size, but both websites are smart enough to make it easy to look for stuff.
Despite those opinions of eBay (many are listed above), you have to admit that they have refined the buying and selling procedures many times and it's easy to find the stuff you want.
I can't imagine anyone else doing it as well, and to be honest, I doubt how comfortable I would be with a new start-up sharing my credit card and bank account junk with....at least eBay's a safe website...despite the occasional fraud.

Sure..
..as a buyer things are fine and dandy
it's when you're selling the cracks are starting to appear

Feedback
When a buyer doesn't pay I just type that into the feedback comment space. It still goes through as positive with a little plus sign, but if any seller actually reads the comments, he/she is alerted. Somebody from ebay is probably going to read this and tell me to stop doing it that way but I'm going to keep doing it until they yell at me.

If
they see, or are alerted to, negative comments in feedback from sellers, they will remove them
or so they claim ...
they probably employ one person, part-time, world-wide for this job 😉