Ebay has had a policy for a while now that, in some disputes, they will cover the refund, and not take it from the seller. This might be one of those cases, where both parties are dug in and they don't want to get in the middle, but want both to be more or less satisfied. In that case it might appear to the seller that it was reversed in his favor.

+1 a 'positive' with negative comments can and should be removed, it's completely against the rules.

EBay is much more of a hassle in every way now. Writing them about anything is hopeless, you get canned responses that appear to be imperfectly translated into English by people who didn't read your question in the first place.

There's a user's forum somewhere on the site, 'members helping members' I think, which actually is much more useful in terms of getting answers than eBay itself.