How did you handle renege by eBay vendor?

[Butch7999]

We're certain this has happened to several members here, but it's a novel experience for us,
so we're wondering how you handled it when an eBay vendor reneged on an auction you'd won.

In a nutshell, won an auction with an automated snipe Monday afternoon. It went fairly cheap,
although we did have to outbid another potential buyer. Physically large item with reasonably large S&H.
Paid as soon as we got home Monday evening, adding, as we always do, a friendly note asking the vendor
to take care in packaging.

Monday night the vendor messages us via eBay to say how shocked and insulted he was
that anyone would have the nerve to tell a "retired postal inspector" how to package for shipping,
and that he was going to lose money on the deal because eBay forced him to include a too-low shipping price.

We replied via eBay telling him there was nothing to be shocked or insulted about, and that
we'd happily reimburse him actual shipping costs after the item arrived.

Tuesday morning he writes demanding more money (off eBay) for shipping, then again asking if
we'd received his demand (we hadn't, we were out and not at our e-mail). We deliberated that night
whether or not to pony up.

We were about to respond Wednesday morning when we found he'd already written again to declare
that the "48-hour deadline" had passed (huh?), and since we'd not acceded to his demand, he was
cancelling the sale.

Obviously the whole thing is just this joker not getting whatever price he'd wanted for his item,
but just maybe he should've started the bidding higher. And just maybe a vendor with 1500 feedback
should know how to adjust the shipping price. It doesn't appear we've been hit with a non-paying bidder strike,
but we'd love to sock it to this clown somehow. Any ideas?