True karma and I'm glad your sellers haven't profited from their skulduggery.
I should preface the following by saying that it's much easier to be pragmatic and philosophical when you're the other side of a house purchase. But ten years ago, we found our dream house and fell in love with it. Lovely EA, nightmare seller (and another buyer interested). We kept bidding up, the EA was incredibly apologetic after each new offer but Mr V had changed his mind again and now wanted another £10k. After increasing our offer by £50k in increments, we finally withdrew and left it to the other buyer. Surprise surprise, Mr V didn't accept their various offers either (he resented having to sell the house) and the sale was shelved. We bought a house that needed a lot of work and we felt was a compromise by comparison. A couple of years later, Mr V had no choice but to sell and someone finally bought the house.
Roll onto last year and the house came back onto the market. As we still had it our minds as our dream house that got away, we were quite excited and scheduled a viewing with the intention of making an offer. It had been beautifully decorated but we realised we liked it far less than our current house and we'd distorted its "perfectness" over time.
Motto of the story is that, although it's really hard to see it at the time and house buying is very emotional, things tend to happen for a reason and you might end up with something far better and not have to deal with undeserving sellers.
Really hope your search goes well..
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