I agree that the new defect system is draconian and can quickly result in sellers losing status, TRS discounts, being limited, or otherwise restricted in their selling. Personally I think eBay is trying to weed out small, independent sellers. Those with higher volumes who are subject to a 3-month evaluation, rather than 12 months are better off. It doesn't take much, percentage-wise, to get into serious trouble with defects when you're only selling a couple of hundred items a year and the entire year is being counted.
That being said, can you clarify what you mean by "I pay 20% more in commissions"? Do you mean you lost your TRS discount (Global, I presume?) because of 3 or 4 neutral/negative FB? Or because of FB and DSR combined? Your DSR rates look pretty good overall.
The reason I ask is that my understanding from the Spring Seller Update is that defects won't affect your TRS status until you have transactions with defects from at least 5 different buyers over your current evaluation period, and that each transaction is counted only once toward your defect rate. So even if one buyer decides to leave neutral/neg FB, low DSRs and a full refund is made, this should only count as 1 "defective" transaction.
I'm wondering if it may be that your TRS discount was affected by your volume or dollar amount of sales dropping below the minimum? I'm not disagreeing that the defect system is hard on sellers, but have you double-checked the figures on your Dashboard to see exactly which parameter is the cause? If it turns out that you didn't have defective transactions with 5 different buyers, I would contact eBay CS and see if you can get it sorted out (if you can put up with the often lengthy phone wait).
Giving buyers an instant refund is the right thing to do if someone is dissatisfied (for whatever reason, whether real or perceived), but it's not a good idea to be defensive about such occurrences. It's simply impossible to make everybody happy all of the time.
Unfortunately, I agree that eBay doesn't make it easy for us sellers to refund immediately and cheerfully without any consequences. So my approach is to refund cheerfully and immediately and try to make the buyer as happy as possible, even if that means making a grovelling apology with the utmost courtesy that I know isn't really warranted. My 20% discount is more important to me.
I also want to add that, as upset as you may be with a buyer who appears to be wrong, it's not a good idea to state "Vindictive buyer" in your open FB responses -- other buyers will see that and it won't serve your best interests as a seller.
Overall, I agree that selling here is getting more and more precarious for smaller (what I call "boutique") sellers. I too have been getting more business through my own website than through eBay lately. Is it short-sighted or stupid of eBay to alienate its original seller base? Who really knows? They may come to rue the day they chased many millions of small sellers away if their big commercial sellers decide to jump ship for their own selling platforms.
As a miniscule participant on this enormous site, I will simply hang on as long as long as possible and do what is necessary to maintain my ability to sell. It usually takes me several weeks to adjust to each successive update, and I've (barely) managed so far. Like most sellers, it's the next Seller Update I always fear.
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