Really sorry to hear of your loss. Over the years I've generally had a good service from PayPal and ebay but then I suppose I've been lucky cos I've heard a lot about scams. But then you don't hear of all the successful ebay and PayPal trades.
It's tempting to sell BTC on PayPal because of the better return but that has to be balanced with the slightly extra risk. However, looking at all the alternatives (BTC-e etc) there's lots of stories of disappearing coins with them too.
Nevertheless it does make me sick to hear of people being scammed.
I would say that the avantage of paypal is not the better return (which depend on agreement), but the faster transfert.