You have been very fair with this seller.
Here's how this works for them. The seller knows nothing about the lathe other than how much it costs them and what they are trying to sell it for. They never even saw the machine before you got it and are now trying to get answers from the manufacturer or some other middleman who knows only a little bit more than they do.
Their number one objective is to not refund your money and they will do almost anything towards that goal including making promises they have no intention of keeping.
If you do get parts they will come from China and take a very long time to get here so agreeing to that will take you past the cutoff dates for eBay at the very least. Also, the likelihood that the parts you receive, if any, will fit your machine is very low. They will try to talk you into sourcing repair parts yourself, and doing your own repairs. None of this was mentioned in the original ad and shouldn't be expected of you. Just add up the time you've spent trying to troubleshoot this mess and decide if you have already exceeded the value of this tool even if it was working.
Remember, none of the people you communicate with will have much command of the English language so it will be very hard to even get straight answers regardless. And, even if they do their knowledge of lathes is probably much less than yours, ie. they might not even understand why the problems you have matter.
This is what I would call a Monopoly game situation, "go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200".
Take a look at the other items this seller has on eBay (if they're even still active under the name they were using) and you'll probably find a bunch of random stuff that has little or nothing to do with machine tools. They probably have several dozen other dissatisfied buyers they are dealing with now, you may not even be communicating with the responsible party, eBay has no way of verifying users in China and they really don't care as long as the fees are paid.
I'm not guessing about this stuff, I bought a bargain packaging machine several years ago and ended up with a similar situation. There's no win=win scenario here, just you being out time, energy and probably money if you continue. File your claim now, they are stalling you and have no intention or ability to correct the problems with this machine. I wish I was wrong but experience shows otherwise. They will play on your desire to "be fair" until they can fade away with your money which they certainly have already spent on other worthless goods to sell to unsuspecting buyers.
This is a business for them, the people (companies) behind this have hundreds of eBay accounts with good seller ratings they can sacrifice so the ratings/feedback system means nothing to them at this point. They can make an account, sell a thousand $2 trinkets to get a good rating, and then go for a big score like unloading a scrap machine tool and never use that account again. Don't fall for it, use the protections built into the system and make eBay eat the loss.
John
