Trying to have a reasonable conversation with ebay (paypal has been worse) in my experience has been like talking to a brick wall. They play by their own rules and change them as needed to suit their purposes. I have done thousands of transactions on ebay and paypal. The overwhelming majority have been seamless. The exceptions is where they just plain suck! I will not bore you with the details - let most of that go a while ago. I encourage you to check out the following:
http://complaints.paypalsucks.com/
and
http://ebaysucks.com/
They are essentially the only game in town doing what they do at the level they do it - my choice is to deal with the truth or choose to do business in some other way. I choose to continue to do business on ebay (with paypal)only because the exceptions in my case have been ........well, exceptional.