[Plugin: WordPress Importer] trying to create 'uploads' directory at wrong path

I think you’re missing a bit off of the error message:

Is its parent directory writable by the server?

and that’s [permissions problems] what I believe you should investigate first. This codex page may be helpful with that.

I doubt the path is wrong because otherwise you would be having many other issues since this error is from wp_upload_dir() which builds the path using several constants used throughout WordPress core.

“Unfortunately” the permissions are correct.
The path isn’t: the /home/furball/ doesnt exist and my files are located at the path starting at domains/...

domains/... isn’t an absolute path. I don’t know where you’re getting your path information from (maybe an sFTP client), but it could be that you’re chroot’d/jailed to /home/furball and so you do not ‘see’ that part of your location.

As I mentioned before this message is from the core WordPress function wp_upload_dir() which builds a path using the upload_path option (empty by default), WP_CONTENT_DIR, or ABSPATH + UPLOADS. So you can override it using those if you’re confident that it is a path issue. Note that the upload_path option will have ABSPATH prepended (which I assume starts with /home/furball).

Thanks for this feedback Jon, even tho I only understand 1/3rd of it ??

I installed WordPress (automatically) via a script provided by the hosting company, for a different user on the same virtual server, and that worked just fine. The Import runs there just fine.

The troublesome installation was done by hand, so I’ll just delete and start over, with that same script. Drastic, but hopefully effective!