Is it full moon time by chance?

Reason I ask is that I have had two loony tunes things happen to me on eBay last week.

First: a seller reported me to eBay as a non-payer. This despite his positive feedback for the transaction saying "good buyer quick payment". This seller wanted payment via bank transfer, so I sent him a copy of the receipt of that transfer and told him to check his own bank account. Next I get an SMS message from him saying "Sorry. Forgot. Will delete it" ... "it" being the non-pay dispute case. Twelve hours later he got around to closing the case.

I admit that I took a punt on this guy because he had what I needed urgently in stock and, after some persuasion, allowed me to pick it up from 15 mins from home rather than wait for Australia Post. I made the bank transfer the day before collecting. As we are both with the same bank, he would have had the payment almost instantly as I know from my own experience in receiving transfers from people who are with the same bank.

I also wanted to collect direct because this guy's feedback record from buyers is not good, including this one: "Filth. Liar. You didn't send anything! Theiving lying. Absolute disgrace, avoid."

Second: I purchased stuff from a seller in SA and paid immediately as I always do. The I get an email from eBay saying, "We're writing to let you know that we've removed an item you recently won. Since you've already paid for the item, you don't need to do anything else. If your item hasn't arrived yet, it should arrive soon. If it doesn't, then you'll want to open a case in our Resolution Centre."

I asked the seller to explain. Seller said he didn't understand either but assured me that the goods are in the mail and has given me a tracking number that AusPost says status = "in transit". This leaves me wondering what I will actually receive.

I have been using eBay regularly for 15 years or more. In all that time I've had only two problems with non-shippers and PayPal reversed those transactions in my favour when the sellers didn't respond to them either.

Now I get two bizarros in the space of a week!

When I have bought radios on Ebay the overall experience has been good and the same goes for when I've sold radios. For other items the experience has been so-so.

If a seller had more than three negative feedbacks now I will refuse to bid on their auctions, no matter what. If there's more than three in the space of a year then the seller needs to do something about their customer service. If the negs in the space of a year are three or less I'll analyse the comments and then make a judgement on how genuine the feedback seems to be. Many negs come because of delays in postage despite the seller proving they posted when they promised to. To me that is not a genuine concern for a buyer as there are often good reasons for delays such as public holidays. The post office is also not going to honour next day delivery from Cairns or Townsville if a cyclone is imminent.

On the other hand if the negs are due to people receiving red items when they selected green ones and the reason is due to "out of stock" then that is a poor reflection on the seller and tough bikkies for them.

In 2016 I’ve been ripped off $500 for a vintage computer accessory with a fried and irreplaceable chip.
It’s unfortunate, being my first buy from eBay on my own account in a long time,
I banked the money, and it looks like I have no recourse although Australian law requires
a seller refund goods that don’t match the advertisement.

I banked the money, and it looks like I have no recourse

Assuming the seller is not co-operative, then your first recourse is through eBay's dispute process. Paying via PayPal gives you better recourse in my experience. Finally, if you pay via credit card, you have some recourse via your financial institution, but with eBay transactions that's a long and drawn out process and they want to see what you have done via eBay's process first.

Having said that, the wording of the seller's ad is important. If the seller uses terms like "untested" or "condition unknown" or "for parts only" then there's not much you can do as caveat emptor is in full play.

Well, the eBay shipment from SA arrived and it was exactly what I ordered, so I have no idea why eBay "removed an item you recently won". Bizarre.

GTC, it can be that Ebay has temporarily or permanently removed the seller because of breach of Ebay rules.

Yes, must be something like that I guess, although this one has 100% positive feedback.