Failed purchase due to misunderstanding of shipping

[indigo_sky_jewelry]

Please help me understand. I purchased an item (Costume Jewelry, Maltese Cross) from eBay UK. She specified "Free Postage" in her item description, though the cost showed a high postage rate. I thought she would refund the shipping charge since she advertised "Free Postage" in her description (which she did, but, alas, also cancelled the sale and refunded it, too, which I did not want her to do). I see when scrolling through eBay UK that some shipping charges are high, others are low for the same type of item, which may indicate that eBay UK sellers do *not* have to use the Pitney Bowes International Shipping selection. What are all the options available to UK international sellers?  Can they just use Royal Mail? I think my seller is confused about this. I know that I am.

[divwido]

None of that matters.   You can bid or buy what you choose but shipping must be paid as stated.

As far as mailing-eBay has all but destroyed the option for a seller to just ship the item internationally.  They have imput their own system and make sellers use it.

[luckythewinner]

I suspect the seller was intending to offer free shipping within the UK, not internationally.

If you tried to purchase and it showed a shipping charge, then IMHO you should have backed away and asked the seller for clarification rather than just paying it and assuming it would be refunded.

The amount that other sellers are charging for shipping is absolutely irrelevent. Some sellers (like me, for instance) may have artificially low shipping costs because we build part of that cost into the item price itself.

IMHO the seller is partly to blame for a misleading title, and you are partly to blame for making an assumption when faced with contradictory information.