OP- you might want to take this issue over to the 'Trust & Safety' board, they are the ones that deal with these types of issues all day long, I'm sure someone over there can help you out and they will certainly have plenty of opinions for you.

And a friendly suggestion just to avoid any extra grief, if you do.....take a breath and break your posting down into paragraphs, otherwise, there will be plenty and perhaps more opinions about that rather than the issue you post about.

Have a great day!!!!

Yes...I have also seen many sellers who add the fees into the shipping. One person I've seen actually charges $18 for shipping which costs $5 in actual shipping charges. They added all the fees into the shipping.
Ebay has become Fee-bay. The final value fee has gone way up. As soon as I can sell my inventory out, I am getting off of ebay. I know other sellers who have been priced right off of ebay because like me, they refuse to charge their fees into the shipping. I charge actual fees...no padding. I'm not jumping on the 'handling fee' bandwagon.
Ebay nickle-and-dimes you to death for everything. Now they charge $.10 if you want your item to appear in ebay-UK. Every picture is $.15. Buy-it-now has a fee....bigger sized photos have a fee...and it goes on and on.
Ebay should stop and realize that the more photos they allow you for free...the more bells and whistles they allow on your listing is just the higher chance your item will sell for more and sell at all....which nets them more money. They have gotten greedy in this time of recession when sellers are hurting anyway. And now they raise their fees and price many people out of the market.
While I do not agree with sellers padding the shipping charges to make up their ebay fees, it's almost the only way some people can survive that sell items which are low in price.
Ebay is shooting itself in the foot.

I'm not saying it's right. I hate overpriced shipping. But if you think about it, when you order something from, say, QVC, Home Shopping Network, any mail order catalog, or something off television, they all charge a handling fee.

I've bought things from QVC, and when I've received them, I know they could have been shipped for far less than I had to pay them. If I've returned something to them, I can always ship it back to them for less shipping than they charged to ship it to me. So I know they've inflated their shipping charges.

Those are all big corporations and can certainly afford it more than the average ebay seller. They tell you right up front that there is a handling charge with their shipping. And those companies don't have listing fees, final value fees, pay pal fees, etc. that ebay sellers have.

Nobody should over do it, but there is expense to the seller in packaging and shipping. Plus you have Pay Pal fees you have to pay. That's a convenience for the buyer as well as the seller, but the seller has to pay for it.

You sell a $20.00 item and even if you only charge the actual priority shipping, you're going to have $2.30 in pay pal and ebay fees, and that doesn't include the cost of packing materials, driving to the post office, or the cost of the item you paid to begin with.

I don't know the answer, but the way it is anymore, I don't see how sellers of small priced items come out. I've often wondered how sellers who list items for 99 cents or less and have actual and reasonable shipping come out at all.

I've actually seen items sell for 99 cents with Free Shipping. After paying their fees, they didn't make anything, they only owed Ebay and Pay Pal. What's that all about? They are going in the hole completely. Why would they even be selling?

Anyway....that's just my two cents worth! (no fees charged for my two cents.)

All these fees are one of the reasons why I did not want to become a seller. I thought it would not be worth it.

As a buyer, before I decide to bid I look at the shipping fees. If they are not listed I look at the seller's feedback and when I feel it's needed I ask the seller about his/her fees through eBay mail. If the shipping fees look unreasonably high to me, then I prefer to abstain from bidding because overly high fees seem very suspicious to me, and I begin to have doubts about the whole transaction.

When I write "overly high fees" I am not talking about registered mail costs which in the instance of India and other countries is an absolute must if you want to receive your package unopened, or to receive it at all. I do not begrudge these sellers because the postal situation in their countries is dismal. I've always requested registered mail and serious postal insurance for the very valuable philatelic items I purchased; I always considered it absolutely normal that I should fully bear those costs --but they had been posted up front.

Sellers and buyers who deal overseas should keep in mind that nowadays, with the internet, any postal fee of anywhere in the world can be checked and verified in minutes. I know who gouges me but I do not argue about it because I prefer to first receive my item (you never know...). Then a buyer can leave truthful feedback and be safe now. Only the gougers ought to be fearful. In truth I find pitiful and untrustworthy those who try to squeeze 50 more cents, $1 from the shipping fees. I do not enjoy doing business with such penny pinchers. Yet, let it be known that in 11 years I haven't yet let a single negative (1 or 2 neutrals, no more), so I am not talking vengeance here.

Since 95% of the time I only purchase philatelic items my usual mailing costs remain under $5. Sometimes I get a very plain envelope mailed at normal US rate, but I was charged $2.00 or $3.00... I then try to avoid such sellers. Sometimes I refrained from bidding because I thought the costs were insulting: I would have been taken for a fool. Stupidly high fees hurt my self-respect more than my pocketbook.

I also use Delcampe more and more for philatelic items and postcards; Delcampe has preserved all the transparency that eBay has lost. It seems that nowadays there's a great veil of secrecy on bidding on eBay. After all, shill bidding is not in any way contrary to eBay's own financial interests. I have lost confidence and I regret the new state of affairs very much.

For CDs, books and dvds I no longer use eBay but Half.com; the shipping fees are fixed and no manipulation of prices is possible, the security is much better for buyers; and most sellers will consolidate their shipping fees.

For the high volume sellers, those who work at the commercial level, I would suspect that they deduct their fees from their taxes as "cost of doing business", in which instance the other taxpayers (including the non eBayers) help foot the bill.

In my opinon it is not right to grosly overcharge for shipping fees. With that being said there is not one seller on here that if they are half smart looses money on shipping. At least this seller wasn't trying to hide the truth. Bottom line is he can pretty much charge what he wants. Ebay claims to have all these policys in place but they surely don't enforce them. The ones that crack me up are the sellers that way overcharge and then are dumb enough to ship an expensive item with no deliverary confirmation. As a buyer someone in that case could lie to Paypal and say the item was never received since there is no proof of deliverary and 100% of the time Paypal will side with the buyer...it's a slam dunk. In most cases if the shipping rate is say double the norm then the item tends to sell for less than an identical item. Alot of Ebay buyers are pretty savy and know what is going on most of the time.

If the price of the item plus s/h cost is more than I want to pay I don't buy it. I don't care if s/h is $15.00 and the item is $1.00 so long as I think the item is worth $16.00 to me then I'll purchase it. I buy and sell on ebay and it is hard to keep selling with all the fees. I think it is up to the buyer if they want the item for the total cost or not. Buyer pays the same and the money either goes to Ebay/Paypal or the Seller.