you are totally right in everything you say, i pretty much gave the same feedback yesterday, my sales tanked when they brought in this new promote scam,so i changed all my listings to the dynamic option,   when i look at the fees i was paying i don’t even cover the costs of materials, so i have changed it back to 2% raised all my prices so i doubt anything will sell and porting everything back to etsy where i started and will close my ebay store in the next few weeks. 

The question i have is let’s say 1000 sellers all selling similar items and promote there listings at 20%, what determines who gets the top spot, some one is still going to be paying 20% promotion yet still is 999 ranked in the list. 

i reckon that creating your own website, driving traffic through google ads and social media will still be cheaper than selling on ebay albeit a bit more work, but as of now i too think ebay is a joke.