What a trainwreck that guy must be. Sorry to see you're being taken for a ride so long.
I had a deal turning halfway nasty with some German audio-gear seller (not a store) that was selling some older Drawmer 19" studio compressors.
Mind you, I live in the neighbouring country and having over 800+ transactions on Ebay I know most shipping costs by head now. The guy quotes me 67 euro's for <10kg shipping, when it's actually 22 euro's (or 17 with less insurance).
Well, I tried to negotiate here a bit, showing the DHL website links with rates etc., but no luck. He was all 'trouble to send internationally, packaging materials, blah blah, sauerkraut'... I did win the Drawmer auctions for a rather low-ish price.
So I pay him -reluctantly, as knowing I'm getting shafted $50 on shipping- and the things arrive pretty much loose inside a clearly re-used box, wrapped in a couple of garbage bags basically with one of the rack-ears bent quite out of shape. No padding material, nothing. Terribly shipped, and on the box itself it shows the DHL shipping price of even 17 euro's!
It was I think the first time I gave someone a negative feedback (and one neutral). After a while he commented on my feedback with bs claims, but I noticed in his feedback that every time he got hit by a negative, some low-feedback buyer would 'buy' from him a couple of times with positives. But always the same guy and buying the same 2 or 3 items over and over.
I know a thing or two about recording studio gear and no one in their right mind will buy 5 or 6 Yamaha REV500's or 8 SPX-900's in one month. They're not even wanted for PA rental companies (SPX-990 maybe...otherwise on the cheap it's usually a TC M-One XL or M300)
The few other feedbacks were usually then neutral or negative and those seemed like legit claims. I reported this practice to Ebay, because it was either a friend or himself on another account bidding and making up his dropping feedback score.
As you said, keeping those things would associate negative thoughts, so I sold them later on, after fixing the rack ear myself.