@anner1813,
You don't have to buy on eBay; you can buy from a seller's own site if you wish (if the seller has a site).
If you do buy on eBay, you know beforehand that if you're purchasing from an eBay seller on eBay who is located overseas, you will be paying the new low-value imported goods GST. (Check the seller's feedback profile to find out in which country they're registered.) With that in mind, you can always google a seller's name and see whether they have their own selling website.
However, under eBay's member-to-member policy, you can't contact the seller through eBay in order to purchase outside of eBay. eBay have definitely gone a little berserk over members contacting each other, but I do understand that they don't want to actually enable transactions outside of eBay since that would be a revenue loss. Have you read through the eBay Member-to-member policy? It explicitly states:
We don't allow our members to:
While eBay claims that this is for members' safety, of course that's a load of codswallop! It is solely down to eBay wanting as much in profit as possible. I think the policy and the idea behind it just makes the whole business of buying and selling on eBay complicated and needlessly difficult, not to mention that it makes it impossible to inspect pick-up items before buying... but if one wants to use eBay, one needs somehow to work within the policies.
eBay's Offers to buy or sell outside of eBay policy makes it very very clear, too.
Buyers and sellers aren't allowed to use information they've obtained on eBay to contact each other to buy or sell off eBay. Sellers who listed an item on eBay must pay all fees for the eBay services they've used, even if the sale is completed off eBay (such as cash on delivery, pay on pickup, or paid by cheque or money order).
So... really, the only option - if you want to buy from small sellers whose annual turnover to Australian buyers is below the $75,000 threshold - is to find those sellers without asking through eBay for their details. You can certainly walk away from a transaction on eBay - by looking elsewhere before you go ahead and click the Buy Now button. But if you do Buy Now from an eBay seller, you will of course be obliged to proceed with the purchase through eBay in order to avoid an Unpaid Item Strike. If you don't mind having an Unpaid Item Strike, you can even walk away after hitting the Buy Now button, but I am certainly not advocating that. (Apart from anything else, that's so unfair on the sellers.)
