I tried to list a few books over 500 gm the other day and it wouldn't let me put $9.80 in as the postage amount even though the red satchel was the cheapest postage, $8.30 was the maximum it would allow even though that's over $1 less than a satchel would cost me.

I had the same problem, I knew how much the postage was for the item I was listing but ebay kept telling me it was higher than the option selected - I ended up out of pocket.

So how come some buyers get away with this? I paid over the top for postage then seller explained were handling charges and they had to send them to a clearing house, at the time I accepted it and paid up, then I got the item and it was all bulls* there was no special handling and I could tell by the postal details they were not in a remote area and could have posted it themselves and probably did. I left positive feedback tick (negative is only left for the really bad bad sellers) then left 1 star on the postage, didn't make the bad taste go away tho. They were listing in GBP as well which seems a bit dodgy as they are on the gold coast, their explanation was that they were trying to get the UK market - well then list on bay uk only then!!! I have crossed them off my list.