I am impressed that you did push it. The fact that ebay gave a refund after 3 months says to me they were probably contacted by Fair Trading at some stage, maybe for details, and decided to follow the easiest path.
You would think it was an admittance of liability but it isn't always. I used to work at a school and our prin told us that anyone who brought a case against a school, the Department automatically made an out of court settlement, whether they thought the person had a strong case or not. It was easier than contesting it. We were talking at the time about a ridiculous claim someone had made when they were not even in the school.
In your case, the refund was well deserved. I can understand that okay, ebay sees a tracking number and information that the item has been delivered, they may automatically side with the seller. They hate to involve humans, they try to do everything with Bots.
But once a human was contacted, if they looked into it and saw that the tracking address was not to you, then I think the seller should have been put on notice.
