Exactly 🙂
Maintaining an already long installed system is definitely an operational cost . If E2E security were to fail or to be compromised Ebay would cease to trade immediately . They are duty bound to maintain it at their cost and not quote some kind of fake protection insurance as a reason to fund it . Ebay are perfectly entitled to fund via valid transparent service costs such as properly named buyer or sellers fees . As said their are probably so reluctant to do that as it would take some of the fake shine of "Free to Sell" mantra as it would clearly show they have just renamed the sellers fee to a buyers fee
Its not only misleading to customers its probably breaches FSA rules as well and the more you think it through the worse it gets .
The only thing buyers fee could be said to be as protection for Ebay to mitigate the risk they have created by implementing SD. With SD the seller is no longer responsible for delivery and from a basic legal point of view all the Seller has to do is hand to the courier for that legal responsibility to be absolved . Ebay get round this by changing T&C's but this in itself is one monumental reason for sellers to stop selling as what BPF actually does in practice is increase the risk on the seller as they have no choice to accept Ebay's refunds and returns for which the seller has no control .
The VTD set-up is very clever but has limited application and only really works or is safe for lower value items . At some stage Ebay will need to work out old model was so much better . Copying VTD was never the answer to Ebay's problems , they just needed leadership that understood their business and not some else's 🙂
