I am sorry you have learned this very expensive lesson. The steps eBay explained would have been followed IF you had been able to send a return postage label. But you couldn’t – not because the item was in the USA or because it was a “medical item” or because of a problem with US customs – but because it is not possible for someone in Australia to send a return postage label to someone in another country. So the next steps in the eBay INAD process were carried out.

As has been said it is possible to negotiate with someone in good faith by paying them in advance for the cost of returning the parcel; I have done this once in my years on eBay. The negative Feedback I have now came from someone in USA who I assume confused inches with cms; I refunded them instantly as I knew there was no other reasonable path to follow.

So really the uptake is that eBay’s Seller Protection does not work for overseas sales from Australia. And as others have said, your zero Feedback could have marked you out to anyone wanting to obtain an expensive item for free. You can’t absolutely be sure of the circumstances here but I am sure you will (rightly) be very wary of listing expensive items for International sale again. I do not list anything over about $500 for International sale for this reason, and when an International bid comes about, I am very quick to check the buyer’s Feedback (as a Buyer/Seller, Left for Others) for anything that looks troublesome; bids can be cancelled and bidders blocked. Not the case for an outright sale of course, but I do not sell the type of item (expensive designer watches, handbags, phones, electronic goods etc) that are likely to catch the eye of a would be scammer and I would hope that my Feedback would deter them anyway.

Again I sympathise with your loss and understand why you feel let down by eBay. If you decide to remain on the platform as a seller, do follow the advice already given; start slowly with lowish value items in Australia only, until you build up more Feedback and experience.