I couldn't agree more. It's all very well for eBay to tell us to add the additional fees to the postage cost but buyers aren't stupid and most of them are well aware of how much something costs to send from point A to point B and if you charge in excess of actual stamp or postage cost, they're just as likely to hit you with a defect for charging excessive postage.

You can't even add the price of the envelope or padded bag or bubble-wrap to the cost by way of a handling fee because that also takes the postage beyond actual stamp cost and while most buyers accept that somebody has to pay for those necessities, there are still plenty of unreasonable buyers who still believe that those costs should be borne by the seller.

It has become painfully obvious to me that the only safe method of preventing the possibility of being defected for what some buyers deem to be excessive postage costs is to list with "free postage" and that way you receive an automatic DSR score of 5 stars and no possibility of a defect, which is eBay's way of forcing sellers to adopt "free postage" by stealth.

However, I flatly refuse to charge "free postage" because I think it's misleading to buyers to do so, and will continue to list all of my items with separate postage, which means that in order to avoid low DSRs or defects for postage costs, I'm essentially forced to charge actual stamp cost only and absorb the additional postage costs myself.