As a former eBay LIVE CHAT representative, I want readers of this column to know something. Insurance is a ploy that SOME sellers use to gain extra profit. Knowing full well that the post office and other couriers rarely have mishaps, these unscrupulous sellers are pocketing the funds, and simply sending out replacements when a claim comes their way through the buyer. In most cases a seller who packages properly can make a thousand sales and have only one or two breakages - so do the math.... That's two or three thousand dollars for AT MOST a hundred or two hundred dollars in replacement costs.

I, personally, would be suspicious of anyone pushing insurance as a mandatory thing unless they're shipping proof of the insurance with the package. And then, at that point, the realistic options of possible breakage then still exist, and you're not likely to ever need to file a claim IF the seller packages properly in the first place.

THEREFORE - I'd like to mirror Brad's comment that return shipping should ALWAYS be the responsibility of the seller in the case of breakage BUT I'D ALSO LIKE TO ADD that this should also be the case when an item is "not as described", because currently, PayPal takes a pansy stance on this issue, and they require the buyer to pay the return shipping. Anybody in their right mind would agree that if the item isn't as described, that this is fraud - and we all know how the courts deal with fraud. It's just too bad that this isn't the case on eBay.

Amen?