Hi
I once run into a similar issue. after that, I delete the affected user from local AD, due to DirSync, the corresponding user is also removed from office 365. later, I just re-create the user from scratch.
I nitice you mention, About the third try it appeared to not return and I was able to recreate the user from scratch successfully.
It seems you directly remove the user from cloud, what about the original AD user? Is it still in local AD? Then you re-create the user in AD. So, is it possible that thre are two such users in AD. Could this be the cause?