I have always been bothered by the concept of the buyer paying insurance on shipping. The law places the burden of assuring delivery of an item on the seller, just as it places the burden of assuring delivery of payment on the buyer. If I buy an item and the payment is not received by the ebay seller, do you think he is rushing off to ship me the item?

It is permissable for a seller to charge 'shipping' (or shipping and handling as most stores and catalog companies refer to it), and many incorporate various costs into that catch all.

Sears created the concept of 'self insurace' through their catalog, although I am unaware of them calling it that. They included a small fee in their S&H that covered the expected pct of items lost or damaged. They shipped so many things around the world, the concept was a profit base for the company. That is one of the reasons that S&H is so often based on amount of purchase instead of what or how heavy the item purchased.

If a person says mandatory isurance (or not responsible if not insured), it means nothing, they have to replace or refund whether they like it or not. The catch is you may need to file a lawsuit in their jurisdiction to force the issue.