Then if the item arrives damaged you tell ebay, they get you and the seller to come to an arrangement OR they ask if you want a refund, even if you go the refund route and you got the damaged goods the seller has to pay return postage. Most ebay sellers hate this and the forums are (ebay) are full of buyers scamming like this. So its really hard to loose like this on ebay, the big exception is if you pay outside of paypal....then its all down to you.
That's basically how it went and why so many small private sellers have dropped off ebay. It's too easy for buyers to scam them using different variations of exactly what you described and small volume sellers can't swallow many scam hits and justify staying on.
For high volume sellers of low cost items eating some profits on a scammer now and then is just part of business. But for people like me who only sell occasional high dollar specialty items one big hit is way past the point of eating just to stay on ebay and unfortunately with higher value items that makes people like me the most lucrative targets to try and push a scam on whether it flies in the end or not.
FWIW, I loved having ebay for a source for everything and sang their praises for years while others told of similar scams and like things they dropped them for and rarely went a week without buying something there.
But since they can't be bothered to help the people on the end of the system that makes them possible, screw them just like everyone else they cheated has.
For that, I too voted with my feet and now buy my stuff elsewhere, just like countless others have chose to do for the same reasons.
Ebay has got greedy along with paypal, so prices are not as cheap anymore, sellers get hit with alot of charges and if your a legit company you got tax etc. Amazon for fill i use sometimes now as a handy where house