Suck for you to live in the USA, I think they have more control over this kind of situation there. If here, they probably just wait for a while before closing the account entirely to cover tracks of that negative balance.
I cannot understand what happened tho, how do you refund them with having no balance in either your PayPal account or credit/debit card? We cannot issue refund until negative balance in the first place. Unless it was a dispute/chargeback.
I am sure life happens, but shouldn’t you have insured your goods? Especially if it’s high-ticket items like this. It just does not make sense. If your profit margin is good and your buy cost is good, isn’t it make more sense to just buy again the items ordered and issue a delay in delivery instead of refunding everyone ultimately losing your buy cost + potential profit?
Also what happened to the damaged goods now? Are they completely worthless now? Can it be somehow repaired or returned to your seller for a replacement? Or at least a small compensation to help you with your PayPal issue.
It has been 4 months since this happened, a lot of things could have been done during this time, did you make any progress at all?