Pete,
It will also slow down communication between prospective bidders and sellers.
Another middle man. EBAY emails have been quite slow for a while now. At one time, bid confirmations came within minutes. End of auction messages were received by the next day at the latest. Now both are sometimes not received for 2 or more from close of auction. That's right even the bid notice. I expect this same situation to occur with EBAY as a middle man during an auction. This means many people will not bid because their question was not answered. This equals lost sales or reduced bid amounts. The only possible good I see here is the potential for reduced spam. However, I doubt that will actually be the result of this new policy. Just one more way to limit interaction between people and keep all business / sales under EBAY control.

Paul