A package to me was “lost” and the seller refunded the $. A week or so later, the package arrived. Once I inspected the item, I contacted the seller. He provided me his PayPal address and I paid him.

Only thing in doing it this was is the seller has to be creative in sending his PayPal address through eBay messages. eBay does not like buyers/sellers making conversations/payments outside their message system. You can usually get around this my sending at address like: JOHNDOE -at- abc dot com, or have the seller take a picture of their PayPal address and attach it to an innocuous message.