I just had my first refund from a seller.
He claims that eBay is holding his paypal funds and he can't access them. So rather than holding my money, he just refunded it back to me.
Now this could be true and I know there is some new policy about this where eBay can hold your funds.
However in this specific case for this auction, it could be that the seller either didn't have the item or thought he could get more for it, so he just refunded me.
Either way, not matter to me as I was able to win another of the same item. But if this is true, then it's going to suck for sellers. If it's not true, I won't be able to report it and it would suck if sellers started using this as an excuse to get out of low winning bid auctions.
Meh, m use of eBay has greatly decreased. Even before the boycott I wasn't buying so much. It's dropped a bit since then.