For the longest time I had thousands of positive feedback and had never been dinged with a negative feedback. It reminds me of when you get a new car and you are crazy about not getting it dinged or scratched and once you get a ding or two you stop caring so much.
That is how it was with my ebay account. I was going overboard catering to demanding customers all trying to avoid getting a negative feedback kissing butt and giving refunds when they really weren't deserved or were a customer mistake. I recently lost my top rated seller and power seller standing because of trying to claim final value fees back. I kind of stoped caring and its actually very freeing that I'm not jumping through hoops to keep that.
The discounts were nice but nothing that huge, main discounts were on USPS postage but I ship all fedex these days so that didn't really help me out anymore.
Just thought it was worth noting as I imagine others out there have the same logic as I had so protective of ebay account but once you get a bad feedback or lose stnading you really don't have to be as paranoid about ebay.
I had a customer the other day who basically said before I leave feedback I'd like you to refund me because I saw a seller on ebay selling this item for such and such amount of money. He wanted me to refund him 6 puchases over the course of the last year. I told him not only is that a totally different selling platform but there's people selling the same thing at various prices all over ebay, if he wnated best price and iddn't care about service or feedback he should hvae bought from someone else. Told him I provide a superior service and charge a bit more for it. We got into a big thing and basically he said he was going to leave me bad feedback. Told him my thousands of good feedbacks will outweigh his go right ahead. Needless to say he never left me bad feedback and I didn't have to cave to an extortionist.