So, what's the deal with shipping Exploitation on eBay?

Bill Cobb, recently stated that ebay will soon be taking a firmer stance against shipping fee exploitation. You can read it here.

However, it appears that, for now, their only action is to come down on sellers harder, but there are just too many auctions to regulate.

Don't get me wrong, I love eBay, and I use it a lot, but there are just a lot of common things missing from eBay's search.

One quote I found amusing in Bill Cobb's letter is this: "What’s more, 54% percent of our top buyers on eBay believe that shipping fees are the most important part of an item’s total price. In fact, half of the buyers surveyed would rather buy an item with a higher total cost than an item with an unfair shipping cost."

Sorry 'top buyers', but frankly, you are idiots. Yes, I still get angry when a seller tries to jack up the shipping price on me, but, who would really buy an item for say $100 with free shipping, when you could get the same item for $70 with $20 shipping (and you know it will only cost them like $8 to ship).  This  taken to an extreme is still rediculous, but, bottom dollar is still bottom dollar.

Why do sellers jack up the shipping cost?

• To get a better search result when searching by lowest price
• To avoid paying high eBay fees (they don't pay fees on shipping costs)
• To add eBay fees into shipping/handling (so when their auction ends for $50 they get $50 in their accounts instead of $43)
• Because 100' of bubble wrap at Staples is $30, a 14"x14" box is $3.49 and gas is hovering around $3.00 per gallon, so handling and packing materials alone for a single box might actually be $9, or if they only have one thing to ship and buy their packing materials at the Post office, it could be like $15 or so if they need bubblewrap