Well, it's the real person think I need.
Query is reasonably simple: I bid and 'won' an auction and paid by PayPal. eBay then emailed me to say that the auction had been declared 'void' and cancelled. In fact every trace of the seller and his sale had disappeared from everywhere you might expect it. OK, dubious seller.
However, to get a refund of my purchase or at least find out what and why it happened, one needs the ID number of the sale. But this has been wiped from their records (I had a record though) and any form mail to eBay gets rejected at the submit stage without a valid ID number.
Catch 22
You can't even ask them a question, it seems without having the ID number, or you get drenched in their bot messages.
It does look as though their defences are reasonably watertight, and although I would be the first to give them the benefit of any doubt when it comes to customer service, they seem to have solved it by just not offering it at all. Ingenious. I hope it doesn't filter across here as corporate policy with anyone else.