Originally Posted by
G1nko
@Drakonchik
So where I erred was eBay is always charging a final value fee on shipping.
I was under the impression they didn't charge the FVF is you kept your shipping charges under a certain amount and that it was an attempt to circumvent fee avoidance: this item is only $1 Buy It Now with $100 shipping charge.
I was wrong, but it's still BS to pay a FVF on shipping as it's a cost associated with the item and not a profit-center. Regardless, it's a policy of which the OP might not be aware and my intent was to bring it up in the discussion as such.
No need to get "snippy" about it.
Peace, didn't want to sound nit-picky towards ya, just to get the facts out.
The eBay FVF-on-shipping policy effectively stops fee-avoidance
as between the seller and Ebay. But it still does not stop sellers from over-charging shipping
vis-a-vis customers. However, Ebay still has mechanisms for dealing with the latter, such as reporting gouging and the feedback system (shipping & handling).
And yes, the new-ish policy (been in effect for a while now) is effectively a fee hike. Speaking for myself, there is no feasible way for me to ship any cheaper (there is virtually no way for me to get physically better shipping -- I have tricks, and tricks within tricks to keep it as cheap as possilbe), and yet my FVFs per month have shot up 20% with this policy.
The people whom this FVF-on-shipping hurts the most is precisely shippers of large, heavy, bulky items -- like bicycle frames. While it is true that this policy "incentivizes" such sellers to master physical shipping practices, nonetheless is penalizes those sellers who have already mastered such practices and can't make an item smaller or lighter.