Maybe Carl if - QUICK - payment was so essential , its clear you were on a very tight schedule , maybe you should have made it clear in very BOLD text that you needed very quick payment , IE , within 2 hours of auction or a phone call immediately after auction etc , or no bidding without a phone number , its your auction you can set a criteria to reduce problems.

Personally i have never had any issues of ebay , or with paypal and have sold goods worth thousands of pounds , including to poland , people out UK ten to be lowr in response - IE - not immediate payment but find they get there and now almost 700 transactions on ebay so its not all bad

paul