Howdy from Texas....I agree with the guy above, a little - and I do 'SIMPLY MOVE ALONG' a lot of the time when I see outrageously high shipping prices or required 'private' S/H insurance fees tacked-on to already exorbitant S/H....A large number of ebay shipping prices are ridiculous...I buy and sell, and when I sell, I sell an average of over 90 percent of my items becuz I offer low/fair/reasonable shipping....like under 3 bucks to ship a movie...I understand the guy above saying that there's more to the cost than just postage, but sellers need to try what has worked for retailers and other sellers forever - and that is - put your costs in your selling/starting price...and don't pay for every little gizmo add-on that ebay offers - like why do folks feel the need to display a gallery pic of a popular movie DVD for an extra 35 cents per?...I know - it's becuz ebay says it will increase your sales by so many percentage points - do you think ebay is going to claim that it doesn't help at all much of the time? - heck no.... and if you are only selling/shipping one item at a time you aren't going to make any money anyway...(before the latest postage increase Amazon.com limited their private sellers to only $2.47 per DVD or VHS tape for basic shipping, unless the buyer wanted a faster shipping method)...I don't think it costs $2 in fuel per item to drive to the post office if you are shipping out a numnber of items....maybe 25 cents per item for fuel if you live anywhere near a post office and are selling enuf to make it worth while...I get all my perfect boxes and most perfect clean packing material for free from retail stores, like the local Dollar Store, that are just going to throw it all out...all I usually have to buy is packing tape and postage and less than a gallon of gas to send 2 dozen items at once...and I routinely receive praise for my excellent packaging. ...and another thing....ebay allows sellers to scam on high shipping rates becuz ebay knows that those sellers don't sell a very high percentage of their items and those sellers have to pay listing fees over and over on the same items before they finally sell, if they ever sell at all...like the last goofball seller I laughed at that offered a movie DVD for the great 'Buy It Now' price of $25 with only $10 shipping, while the seller with the item just above offered the exact same movie for $6 with $4 shipping (for just a plain old movie, in this case 'Mean Girls')....which one would you bid on/buy? ....and as far as sellers requiring buyers to pay 'private' shipping insurance goes, those sellers need to know that in the USA you have to have a license to sell insurnace and collect premiums, and there's paperwork that has to be involved, and that money has to be kept seperate from other profit and held in trust...it's only a matter of time until there is a big class-action suit against such sellers by state's attny generals...I just saw feedback left for such a seller from a buyer that said his three items arrived with no insurance on them after he was forced to pay one dollar per item for insurance to the seller over the stated shipping price - and the shipper was UPS Ground that is already insured!....TOTALLY against the laws of all 50 states and the USA....idiots...but therein lies the root of the problem...the fact that, sadly, 3/4 of all humans are as stupid as cattle. I asked such a seller - a seller with over a 25,000 fdbk rating - to provide me with his license number to sell insurance and a form with all the insurer info and from the lack of a reply I can only presume that when he read my request he didn't know whether to wind his butt or scratch his watch. If such a seller deposits just one dollar of collected insurance premiums in the same account he puts his regular operating funds, he is in violation of state and federal law....and if the illegally insured package crosses state lines in the mail, it's federal mail fraud to boot. ....and LASTLY... ebay is being sued by a state for looking the other way on shill bidding...shill bidding on the internet, namely ebay, is rampant...shill bidding is the whole reason ebay added the bid retraction count on ebayer ratings profiles, so it would be easy to spot bidders that are helping sellers increase the fianl price of their auctions....look for bidders that always bid on only one or two seller's items...and when the shill bidders mistakenly win from time to time, check feedback turnaround times...some aren't smart enuf to wait a few days to leave pos fdbk for themselves...if an item is won and the buyer left positive fdbk within hours of winning the item it is most likely a shill bidding situation....after all, when was the last time you got an item delivered from an ebay win in less than a day? Since ebay started keeping track of bid retractions the most common way to shill bid has become 'nibbling'...just bidding a little higher all the time to try and find the real bidders max bid without going over and possibly winning the item and needing to retract the illegal bid. ...oh yeah, and I saw this mentioned somewhere...if a claim is filed with PayPal against a seller that sells their items for a small amount - like a penny - with grossly inflated shipping prices, PayPal recognizes that the seller is deriving their profits from the shipping and will make the seller refund a large portion the excessive shipping amount as well as the purchase price of a penny in most cases, if the buyer is alert enough to bring disparity to PayPal's attention. BOTTOM LINE...if you can't enjoy buying and selling on ebay - especially selling - you should probably find another, less stressful, hobby - like trying to create a record-breaking ball of string, or something. I'm disabled and I spend hours just searching feedback to see what's going on out there and it's absolutely pathetic too much of the time...I just spent 4 hours looking at a number of buyer's and seller's feedback and got some good laughs and many more ebay I.D.s for my extensive blocked bidder list...just one example - a particular seller that had numerous neg fdbks for late shipping...buyers noting that their items weren't even mailed until three weeks or more after they had paid for them thru PayPal....and that seller responded to them with neg fdbk and replys that included nasty name-calling and ridiculous statements to the effect that he didn't think that almost 4 weeks was too long to wait for an item, and he was quick to blame everything on the folks that were relatively new to ebay(ratings under 50) that had complained about his 24+ day shipping waits(I've had dozens and dozens and dozens of new ebayers without a single incident....after over 1000 deals I have 2 neg fdbks from two last-second bidders with over 100 ratings that clearly needed psych evaluations)....and that same seller left neg fdbk to another seller when the item he paid for seemed to take too long - arriving only 10 days after payment...and it just kept getting worse after that...let's just face it - some folks just weren't meant to deal with the public - or even go out in public, for that matter...and while I'm at it, one more thing...we sellers need a way to filter out bidders with too much neg fdbk....I'd like to see a filter to exclude bidders by their rating percentage, becuz I would filter out every bidder with less than 99.1%...

FOR THOSE SELLERS THAT REFUSE TO USE ANYTHING BUT PRIORITY MAIL....breakables fare way better shipped via Parcel Post rather than via Priority....priority mail is rushed - and when government workers are rushed they cut corners and throw/roll/kick packages...and the more you stamp it 'FRAGILE' the worse it will be treated...so if you want your buyer to get their item in 3 days or less, use Priority Mail and stamp it fragile...and your buyer will often receive a fast package full of broken pieces - like the glass coffee press I tried to buy that arrived in a thousand bits inside a free priority mail box with no padding at all - but at least it came quickly....I would have much rather waited a few more days to possibly receive the item intact....(source of tip - one of my best/lifelong friends is a Postmaster with over 25 years on the job)
Y'all try an' be good, now....and take care