>I haven't done much with on-line auctions, but since I'm heavily involved in the shipping and logisitics industry, I drive people who overcharge for shipping nuts because I can get the real cost of shipping, and scream bloody murder when they call it a shipping charge and I can see it's marked up 50%! And it'll get harder and harder to overcharge, since the major shippers have web sites where the published rates are available and you can find out the most that could've been charged given a method of shipment, origin and destination zips, and the list of added-cost services used for the shipment. A large part of our in-house OE system is devoted to accurate computation of shipping costs for our product (especially people like libraries and bookstores, who're notoriously cheap when it comes to shipping charges.) It gets worse if you ever get involved in 'free freight'...

You should try dealing with a bunch of philatelists, who are all experts on postal & other shipping rates :)

But anyway, if you ever get into online auctioning, you will find that the word "shipping" is often not equivalent to only the cost of third-party transport (like USPS, UPS), but also includes assorted other costs, including any associated transaction costs, like packaging, auction-listing fees, credit card fees, etc. The buyer is expected to contribute, reasonably, and it's understood by everyone with a little experience.

For example, I buy/sell a stamp for x dollars, then I usually pay/charge $1.00 shipping, even though the item itself is shipped with a 33-cent stamp. Just normal business rules...