Hello 'munron',
You're right, they're not much interested in communicating with customers. Doing so is
expensive, or at least training people to be proficient at Customer Service is expensive,
so they prefer you sort most things out for yourself. . . . Or so it would seem.
This here is an easy one. You say the item did not sell. That means you did not buy it.
Ebay only keeps listings around for 90 days after they end. So if you have an item in a list
for price comparison, 90 days after it ends, it's gone.
60 days if it is in your regular Watch List.
At this point all you can do is rack your brain to try to remember the title details to see if
it has been relisted, or the seller's ID to see if s/he still has it, or more likely, to check the
seller's sold listings to see if/when another buyer nabbed it.
You can check 'completed listings' from the left side of the page.
If you wish to see something you bought, on your Purchase History page under the word
Purchases, is the word Archived.
Click that and you can see your past purchases (after 60 days ebay automatically chucks
all your bought items into your Archives.)
These are only available for the last 3 years.
Also, if you bought from the seller before, the ID should be in your feedback page, and that
will linger around forever.
Hope some of that helps.
