Jesse, hiking up the shipping is a shady practice and I know lots of people that refuse to deal with sellers who do such a thing, it's rediculous to do.
That said I am currently having an issue with ebay. I recently moved and somehow lost all of my sets of probes. I found some at a local shop here but I like to have extras and found a nice set on Ebay so I purchased them and paid waaay back the beginning of Oct.
It's now the second week of November and guess what? Still no probes. I opened a claim with ebay since the seller refused to respond to my emails and was then sent a 'tracking number' by the seller. He claims to have shipped them UPS ground on the 24th (I paid for USPS Priority). After I email him back and make a note on paypal I get an email from him saying he'll send out a 'replacement' set. He called today with the tracking number and claims they'll be here Tuesday.
We'll see.

And when did paypal start charging a fee to when you escelated something to a claim? Talk about a load of crap. I remember so much why I loathe it.