From the perspective of a buyer who is based in Canada and used to typically buy a lot from US sellers, eBay International Shipping (eIS) only works in the rare case of buying a relatively low weight yet expensive item, and a single item only, paying for one listing worth in say the $100 range or more while buying nothing else. Then eIS works for that $25 shipping charge or whatever it is whenever it's reasonable in proportion to the overall value of what is being bought. So for an expensive item when you're buying absolutely nothing else, for a once in a blue moon purchase, eIS can rarely work.
Most commonly however eIS is an unaffordable disaster due to the lack of combined shipping when you're dealing with multiple lower-cost items from the same seller. As a buyer in the past this was typically how I used to buy most of the items that I purchase off eBay. You add 8 or 9 affordable items to the cart all from the same seller. It could be collectibles, cards, craft supplies, whatever you name it stuff that is in roughly the $1 to $20 range. Buyer is thinking, "Ok I'll buy everything from the same seller to save on shipping."
So you've got 9 items in the cart. With eIS you go to pay and find yourself slapped with a $14.49 shipping charge on EVERY SINGLE ITEM in the cart. If you've got 9 different items in the cart--items from separate listings but from the same seller--this amounts to a $130.41 shipping charge for more or less $50 worth of light weight inexpensive stuff. At this point the buyer either completely gives up and looks elsewhere or else says, "This can't be right" and contacts the seller only to get into a confusing headache.
Sellers especially US sellers that ship to Canada are still clueless about how high the shipping cost is when you order more than one item with eIS. Apparently invoices can't be requested or sent, shipping costs on sales that the buyer has already paid for can't be amended, and it's overall a nightmare to deal with. You contact a seller about the outrageous shipping cost and they say "I DO offer combined shipping just add everything to the cart before you pay" but buyers are already doing this.
Combined shipping simply doesn't work for eIS and sellers in the US are apparently still in the dark about it. To make matters worse, so many people still confuse GSP with eIS when they are two totally different systems. At least with GSP it did combine shipping costs to some extent. The shipping cost with GSP was on the high side say $50 to $60 for 4 items from the same seller on average. If the items where high enough value, with GSP, the shipping cost could still be justified in many cases.
People did hate GSP for its overall high shipping cost but it still wasn't as insane as eIS is now. eIS compounds even worse than GSP ever did the more items you buy per order. Once you're buying 5 or more items the shipping charge with eIS easily reaches $100 or more in most cases which is outrageous in relation to what the overall value of the stuff is. No sane person is going to pay $130 shipping on $40 of stuff. I've had to cancel many orders and walk away from purchases because of eIS.
