... having settings in place and counting on them to prevent such customers and Ebay ignores it or removes the strikes or leaves such terrible people as memeber - they are welcome to them!

How/why does eBay remove their strikes? If you're worried about that, just set it at the absolute maximum level, which is something like "2 Unpaid Item cases in the last 12 months."

I personally just lowered mine to "2 in the last 1 month" to see if it helps with bidders.