why is Ebay taking a cut of shipping costs?

[doris3day]

why is Ebay taking a cut of my shipping costs?  this is cutting into my bottom line because i am honest and charge correct prices for shipping?  this seems very unfair to the seller and to the customer because i would guess that a lot of sellers pad the price somewhere and pass the additional cost along to their customers.

[sam9876]

eBay charges a final value fee on the amount that you charge for shipping.

[jawe-4215]

They do it because too many dishonest sellers we're listing $99 shipping and $1 for the item to avoid fvf.

Incidentally almost every other large selling venue on the internet also charges for the total cost, not just the item price

[scga912]

While fee avoidance was one reason, free shipping was another.

Fees are on the whole amount.  You just see it broken down because the item FVF gets charged when the customer hits Buy Now and the shipping FVF get charged when they pay (because it's subject to change)

If you listed everything with shipping rolled into the price (aka Free Shipping), you'd still be paying an FVF on it.

[castlemagicmemories]

It's to stop fee avoidance as a previous poster mentioned with the example of $99.00 shipping and $1.00 item cost.  So Ebay removed that loophole.

Incidentally, Amazon started charging this before Ebay.

Add to your item price to cover that cost.

[7606dennis]

Why do some states charge sales tax on shipping and others do not?

[skatefool]

They do it because it was vastly simpler and much more profitable for Ebay to charge every honest seller FVF on shipping costs than it was to boot or penalize dishonest sellers that were dodging FVF by padding the shipping charge.

[muttlymob]

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@doris3day wrote:

i would guess that a lot of sellers pad the price somewhere and pass the additional cost along to their customers.

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Any seller who is in this to make money would of course pass on their costs of doing business to the buyer.

[jokabofe]

They do it because they can. They do it to get every possible cent out of every possible sale. They do it because there's nothing you can do to stop it.