After dealing with ebay for a couple months or so, it quickly became obvious to me that one should not consider the item price and shipping price as separate fees and get flusterred when the shipping charge is above what the USPS.com website says it should be. You should instead take any auction you look at in the same way which is to add the item price and shipping price together to get a total as if you were in a store and that was the cost.

Would you buy the item for that price? If so, then bid, otherwise, let it go.

I hope everyone is going to equally harass Mr. John Panzica who just listed a post. He is charging $2.10 for shipping on a single roulette chip. I thought shipping is only $0.37 to $0.49 for a single chip, right?

With all that feedback, I see it is working for him. I guess I will stick to this method since it is the same that the ebay chip power sellers all do.

The only way to attract potential bidders is to have the lowest offering price, and recoup the rest of your actual asking price in the "shipping" price. It's just the way it is on the auction scene.

Maybe a way to get control of this would be for the auction services to list the combined price of the item and shipping on the auction list view, so you don't have to view the auction to search for the shipping price and add them your self. This may help even the playing field. It is strange they allow for this sort of deceptive pricing strategy... Don't get me wrong, I would support such a change by ebay to help me shop around when I am buying and to help my chances of selling up against the competition!

It's been fun!
Dave C.
R-6666