I just recently bought a $40 iBook from a business liquidator. One of my friends was concerned that I'd be ripped off. He's experienced with craigslist however and so has his own methods there to protect him.
I bring this up because from the buyer perspective what you are saying is actually my protection. And that's what I told my friend. The seller had a 99% rating and my purchase was covered by eBay protection. I'm not saying that your points are not valid. I agree, just mentioning the opposite side here. It is indeed weighted towards the buyer.
On the other hand, my wife dealt with a real bad seller a few months back. Seller sells my wife an item for ~$12. The item arrives broken (it's glass). So, my wife asks for some recompense through the messaging system, not even involving eBay at this point. The seller's father goes ballistic. Apparently this ~$12 item is some priceless artifact that his daughter, a first time eBay seller is taking a serious loss on.
So, my wife files a claim with eBay. Which gets the postal service involved. Which gets the father to looking for and finding my wife's unlisted cell number and making harrasing and angry phone calls to her threatening legal action and lawsuits from the Attorney General of New York. He's even demanding to know from her whether MY name is the right name of her husband!
So at some point a freaking US Postal Inspector is involved in all of this. The damn thing goes back and eBay reverses the charges. That was the end of it, thankfully, but I have to say that there is some good reason for a bias towards the buyer.
Just my two cents anyway.
I called up eBay and the tech support informed me that there was nothing they could do to remove the selling limitation from my accounteven though there was no reason for it to exist in the first place, and everywhere else the transaction was marked as cancelled.