The "buddy" at FedEx is his wife. Little chance he was going to have a problem getting it back. And if he pushed pause he knew the transaction wasn't complete or he wouldn't have pushed pause. Add that he had enough time to do all of that but not respond to the buyer?
Should it have gone public (late Monday, BTW)? Maybe not. Regardless of private or public, the seller had time to see the message and infer from just the header that the deal was going south and should have responded before the buyer had time to go public.
Communication, communication, communication. The seller didn't have any and so we find ourselves here.