Many US sellers seem to be charging much more for shipping

[aramatic]

I've noticed recently that in the field I'm interested in, vintage computing, shipping charges have in many cases increased quite dramatically. To take the most egregious example, noted yesterday, a Macintosh with a Buy It Now price of US$219 comes with a shipping charge to Canada of US$603! When contacted, the seller made the same lame excuse that I've heard from other US sellers, that eBay handles all the shipping and calculates the cost. This is wrong, of course. The seller has control over what service to use.

This is an extreme but not isolated example. A lot of vintage computers for around $100 that used to be shipped for $30-40 now come with a shipping charge of $90-100. Since there are still sellers who have reasonable charges this recent burst of dramatic increases must be due either to ignorance or gouging.

Have others noticed this?

[joels-retrocade]

You can thank EIS (Ebay International Shipping) program for that.  Instead of the seller shipping directly to you.  You pay to have it shipped to ebay's sorting center and then they ship it to you from there (So two shipping costs and much longer delivery timeframe).  I find it annoying because I can't buy anything from USA anymore, but I also dont mind because every person that signs up to that worsthless program will just lose sales to me because I ship direct for cheaper and quicker (I also make more money because half the cost isnt wasted on shipping price lol).  They're all just lazy lol dont want to fill out customs form that takes like a minute; plain and simple.  I'm amazed that anyone even signs up for it, they just sending cash to the garbage.

[aramatic]

It's eBay International Shipping that's at fault. I receive things through EIS with sensible shipping charges. It's the sellers that are at fault, through ignorance or otherwise.