Absolutely you need to have a proper ebay claim lodged & follow through and hopefully you get a full refund that way. $40 is a lot at this time of year for a lot of people.
Just one thing to add. When things go wrong with an order and a seller offers to repost, always say nope, just give me a full refund now. That way, if they don't, you can swing into an ebay claim and not have things drag on.
As for feedback being removed, ebay is doing this a bit too often lately when the buyer's feedback has been perfectly honest and reasonable.
I sometimes think ebay should give buyers the chance to edit feedback if there is an issue. And tell buyers what that issue is. Maybe not for out and out abuse or for eg a positive comment with a red dot and those sorts of things, but with otherwise reasonable comments.
All I can think of that may have got yours removed is saying the seller is not in Australia. If it is the one I looked at, the seller seems to be registered in Aust but that does not mean their stock is from Australia, a lot of these sellers seem to drop ship.
I make it a policy never buy on ebay from any seller who has a a whole lot of negs for things such as never responding to messages, never sending things and so on. It can be tempting but a feedback score under about 95% can be a real red flag, you need to check it out carefully before buying.
