I'm afraid that your experience is par for the course, although the ridiculous advice to go to trading standards is new. This is just one more example of eBay staff just picking any answer from a list of standard replies, however meaningless.
The fact is that if eBay was unable to determine that the item as received by the buyer matched the description, they would have supported them anyway. You accepted this policy in the user agreement. What eBay doesn't say is that as they never even see the item as delivered, it's almost a foregone conclusion that eBay will find in the buyer's favour. In all but name buyers can invent any reason to return items for a refund, with the seller even having to pay for the return postage.
If the item is returned damaged, missing parts or even switched for another item, eBay has told other sellers that, as they have never seen the item, they can't "take sides". You've guessed it: eBay's idea of not taking sides is to apply their default policy, and require the seller to refund the buyer!
The reassurances that eBay gives to sellers in their condition of returned items policy seem in practice to be downright misleading: https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/member-behaviour-policies/condition-returned-items-policy?id=47...
EBay's money back guarantee policy is so weighted in the buyer's favour that every sale today is a gamble. This has become an absurdly risky place to sell things, with the seller's side in disputes seeming to count for nothing.
