Ebay sent an email today to powersellers advertising lower insertion fees but failed to mention that final value fees are increasing! Ebay's new policies have a lot of good (such as seller protection to unconfirmed addresses!), but also some very questionable new policies that are hard to figure out and glossed over by the news articles.

Some bad things (for both sellers and buyers) to watch out for:

The BAD:

Lower listing fees  How can this be bad? Ebay will be flooded with listings that are overpriced and have little chance of selling because sellers have little to lose in insertion fees each time something doesn't sell. Buyers will have to weed through lots of garbage auctions. Instead of starting an auction at $0.99 to save listing fees, a seller may start at $8 instead, making things less fun for bargain hunters.

Higher final value fee  Final value fee goes up by 3.5 percentage points to over 8.75%  This is bad for sellers who are making a low margin already, because they may need to raise prices. They may need to raise shipping prices to counterbalance this measure. Some sellers will leave ebay, leaving only the more profitable items on ebay. There will be a bit less of a bargain on ebay as certain sellers will be squeezed out to other auction sites.

ONLY positive feedback for buyers  This is obviously bad for sellers, who are afraid of buyers who may extort the seller for money, or items. A buyer may also try to return something that's not returnable due to buyer's remorse and the seller has no recourse. Why is this bad for the good buyer as well? The seller will have no incentive to leave positive feedback for the buyer (why bother, if buyers can only get positives anyway?).

Payment held by paypal for up to 21 days   If ebay deems what you're selling a "high-risk" item, then watch out, paypal will not release the funds to the seller until 3 days after the buyer leaves positive feedback, 3 days after delivery confirmation, or 21 days without a complaint. So you have to fork over the shipping fee yourself first. Think twice about unloading those used video games if you are in need of money.
From ebay:
Sellers will be required to offer safer payment if they meet any of these conditions:

• have more than 5% dissatisfied buyers in the last 30 days
• have a feedback score of less than 100
• are listing items in the following higher risk categories (and sub categories): gift certificates, video games, cell phones, computers and consumer electronics

If you are required to offer a safer payment option, you might also be subject to holds on payment. PayPal may hold payments for the sale of an eBay item until the earliest of the following occurs:

• the buyer leaves positive feedback,
• 3 days after confirmed item delivery* or
• 21 days without a dispute, claim, chargeback, or reversal filed on that transaction

HOW TO AVOID HAVING FUNDS HELD:
What can I do to avoid having eBay item holds? Your payments WILL BE NOT HELD if you meet all the following requirements:

• eBay Tenure: Greater than 6-months
• Total Feedback score: More than 100
• Dissatisfied Buyers %: Less than 5%

Or if you meet all the following requirements:

• Detailed Seller Rating: Greater than 4.5
• Total Detailed Seller Ratings Recieved: More than 20 in the last 12-months

Why is the bad for buyers:
1. The avg guy who needs to sell some stuff to pay bills (the same people who sell things for the cheapest!) may choose to not sell it on ebay since he can't get his money on time.
2. Sellers will continue to not leave feedback until they get feedback (to ensure the payment gets cleared earlier) to make sure buyers leave feedback.

Only past 12 months feedback count in % Ebay implements this in hopes that those of us with an ancient undeserved negative won't have to worry. However, the older feedback may still be good to know! Sellers with multiple accounts can cycle between them to seemingly have perfect feedback. Also, those with a long history of great feedback are not rewarded, and one undeserved negative will have a much harder impact on the seller than it should.

Suspended buyers get all their negative feedback removed This is GREAT if these buyers were suspended due to non-payment, scamming, and other reasons. If the buyer was removed for a completely unrelated charge (eg, that person also sells, and put "Add $3 for paypal" in their listing, resulting in being suspended from ebay), that person's negative feedback for sellers may still be viable. Ebay may end up removing a lot of useful negative feedback.