Loving eBay

I tend to treat my online earnings as either money to 'invest' in online projects, hosting, domains etc.. or for acquiring 'toys' from eBay. Occasionally I also sell stuff that works, but I no longer have use for. Recently I sold a couple of 'spare' motherboards of 'historical interest' that were languishing in my loft.
I have probably been through more than 170 transactions online and have found that even when things go wrong, the support from eBay is pretty good even though they may not tell you exactly what they are doing about your problem. I have had a few scenarios that have gone a little awry:
1. Wrong thing delivered, shortly before seller was removed from eBay
In this instance, after having no reply from the seller, I lodged a ticket with eBay/Paypal and they immediately got part of my money back - after a few weeks of silence, the rest of the money appeared - I still had the wrong item and was able to sell it again (this time advertised correctly) - good result
2. Faulty items delivered
Without exception, any time I have had a faulty item delivered (probably on about 4 or 5 occasions) the seller has refunded my payment in full. - great result
3. Non-payment
I had my first experience of this a few weeks ago - no payment was forthcoming for one of the motherboards that I sold - I sent three emails to the buyer (who had annoyingly bid against other potential buyers to 'win' the item) , he did not respond. Eventually, feeling it was too late to try a 'second chance offer', I reported the unpaid item to eBay - Less than a week later, Ebay reported that the item had been paid for - and it had!.... result!

The point I wanted to make is that although things sometimes go wrong, eBay will usually sort things out for you. Today I have been warned by eBay that a seller I have paid, has had their listings withdrawn. I am not panicked (Ok it WAS only £3.20), because I am quite confident that the well-oiled eBay resolution machine will get me my money back if I have a little patience. You hear all sort of stories about eBay, but my experience is that if you stick with the system, the system will look after you.