Paypal Buyer Protection - does everything but protect the buyer

If you've ever bought anything off eBay you would have seen the adds for eBays payment system, paypal and in particular it's buyer protection scheme - "up to $20,000". Well I had need to use the buyer protection scheme having bought an item that was not sent to me. Paypal's dispute team found in favour of me but having not not read the part of the very long fine print that says "recovery of your payment, whether in whole or in part, is not guaranteed." I was a bit suprised to find that as far as they were concerned that would be the end of the matter. Basically if you pay for an item and the seller takes that money out of their paypal account then the buyer cannot get that money back, even if it is obvious that this is exactly what has happened..

So how much did I loose? $3.99. Not much in the big scheme of things but I certainly won't be shelling out big dollars for anything via eBay.