Thanks, folks, for the comments so far. I wonder if any newspaper journalists are planning any in-depth critiques of eBay? There's a whole load of disgruntled people out there. eBay, of course, would say that dissatisfactions amount to something like 0.3 percent of total sales, or some such defence.....

Regarding PayPal, they'll reimburse but exclude the first £15 of any claim, so I'd be screwed on a CD. And there's a whole load of other provisos you have to satisfy, like whether there's a "R" in the month, colour of hair, signature of both great-grandparents, the usual bollo.

In my case, the vendor was a "store" - maybe set up as suggested above. What a scam.

Norman