last time I sold thru an auction house the auctioneer charged the Seller (me) 22.5%commission on the final price, and also charged the Buyer (my customer) 17.5% commission on the final price. (so of course he would have lowered his top bid to accommodate that, effectivly I paid the 22.5 and the 17.5 % commissions.......

give me ebay any day

eBay may very well be making trillions, who knows... it's a very successful franchise. In saying that, you too can make alot of money from eBay. Here's a link to eBay's customer service page explaining alot of the fees: http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/sell/seller-fees.html. Also try different selling strategies.

If eBay was free, they wouldn't be here. Sure there are fees etc but the bottom line is if you use the site, you pay the fees. eBay set the prices and if you list, you agree to all the expenses when your item sells

Okay so I have now used up all of my 30 free listings per month and am now getting slugged $3.00 insertion fee for BIN items of over $99. ( Mind you, as soon as I noticed I was getting slugged I soon put a stop to relisting ).   What a rort.

why not rort the system yourself by having more than one selling ID.  I myself use three IDs and currently have things listed on all three.  I get up to 90 free listings per month.