>>>it becomes the resposibility of one to delieve the goods or services and the responsibilty of the other to make payment or other restitution.

The is generally correct. The transaction is not complete until delivery is made.

>>>Also I believe that if anything is insured with the USPS only the sender is entitled to any course of action. ie. making claim for collection. The recipient has no status as far as the USPS is concerned.

This is 100% correct. Anyone who has ever filed a claim with the post office knows this to be true. Only the sender of the item may insure that item and only the sender may file the claim.

A buyer should not purchase insurance to protect a seller and will generally be automatically provided insurance if he/she uses PayPal or a credit card to pay for the item.

The reality is that many ebay sellers simply aren't very good business people and make wierd attempts to get around sound business practice. If you bought a Dell Computer online, you actually expect Dell to deliver the item to you. What a concept eh?

Ebay sellers who are concerned about "buyer fraud" should simply send the item by a trackable method. Hell, most of the shipping is already so high that they should be doing that anyway.

My opinion (and I could be alone in this) is that most sellers aren't really concerned about an item being "lost" but are simply trying to make more money and get around ebay fees with a hidden fee they call "insurance".