profiting from the shipping and handling is despicable, make your profit from the product price.
I did not say that the aim was to profit on shipping I refuse to buy stuff from people trying to do so...I am saying that if you have an auction style listing you can always assume the product will go for what you want to cover fee, because it often doesn't.
If that guy bought the gasket a a retailer at retail prices and say he didn't want make a profit but was trying to get his money back because he couldn't use it.
Say he paid $14 even at the retail store. He then sold it on e-bay for $14 even including shipping to be competitive with stores and other ebayers.
Now, if shipping was $7 and the gasket was $7 he only made half of what he paid back. He is still $7 in the hole.
So say all the shipping money is consumed in shipping and packaging now. He has $7 from the gasket, and has to pay a listing fee of $1.30 he now has $5.70 then final value fee of $.68. He now has $5.02 then the Paypal fee of $.70. He now has $4.32.
All that work for around $4.32 wouldn't be worth it to me. But it is better than nothing. He isn't out there to make a killing on gaskets. Unless he got it at cost or can cut them himself. It all depends on how he ships them too, if he shipped the first class for $1.60, and charged $7.00 for shipping that would be bad because He would have his $7 for the gasket, and his $2.72 left for the shipping.
This shows you that because the fees end up coming out of the price of the item people raise the shipping so they will get their full $7 for their gasket opposed to the $4.32 they would get if the shipping was spot on.
Again I do not condone profiting on shipping but it seems like the way it is for the big sellers.