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@lyndal1838 wrote:

As I have said many times....I don't understand why sellers are so up in arms over the postage fees.  Any seller who prices their items properly is passing the charges on to the buyer anyway.

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For many of the same reasons sellers copmplain when Australia Post increases their prices.

Because, as I pointed out earlier, it's not always a simple matter of just passing the cost on to the buyer when the cost is going to be unknown. 

Increasing selling costs, as you point out, increases item prices. In order to actually pass the increased costs on to a buyer, a buyer has to be willing to pay the increased price. It also makes offering additional postage options (inclduding international) a lot more difficult to accomodate. 

Higher costs to sell on eBay means higher prices on eBay, and alternatives become more attractive - more alternatives are available to buyers than are available to sellers. (Well, in truth, more viable alternatives are available to buyers).  

Those are business concerns, other concerns are more related to the ethical side of things, which is just as worthy of discussion, JMO. 

To the OP, your question was posed on the selling on eBay forum, and the majority of regulars posting here are sellers. They also have the most concern about this issue because - as mentioned - a buyer can look anywhere they like for the same product at the best price, and how that price is made up is (more often than not) of little to no concern (GST on feminine hygiene products notwithstanding - that seemed to cause quite a bit of offence and uproar, and as such, I suspect the only real way to get the average consumer to care enough to protest - and loudly - would be if they had a full understanding of what the fee was costing them and how much cheaper things could be, thought it was unfair plus had no other option than to pay that fee - i.e. no alternative to eBay. That'd be an uphill battle because eBay is optional, and selling fees are the seller's responsibility to consider and deal with - especially when it comes to auctions, buyer decides the price, after opening bid anyway, and why should they care that the seller now gets a little less of the total?). 

Anyway, my point (I did have one 😄 ), is that every post in this thread is written by a buyer. 😉 Not necessarily eBay buyers, maybe, but this is my buying ID, so I feel qualified to refer to myself as one. What I can tell you purely from the perspective of a buyer is... Once upon a time I bought so much here that at one stage, I had an average of 70 items on their way to me for several weeks running. At this point in time, I have two. I haven't abandoned eBay as a buyer specifically because of the fee on postage, but because I get better prices elsewhere (wholly related, of course, but a slightly different reasoning behind the shift to alternative sites, by which I mean it's not what the seller pays that had me looking elsehwhere, but what I'm asked to pay).