Are we the only people loosing money shipping e-bay items?

I've had it Ebay! I want to give people flat Rate shipping, but I get warning messages even when I use USPS Flat Rate boxes. - "We see that your shipping appears high compared to other items in this category."

I don't gouge customers on shipping, but I can't afford to leave money on the table when it comes to freight charges. I have a part-time employee, packaging and overhead to account for. Freightquote.com seems to give buyers a 30-45% discount off of the rates I am able to get from my carriers so I move backwards when I use them in my listings.

.... So, I fixed the glitch. It was surprisingly simple to do. And, while I am sure we are not the first ones to think of it, I thought it was worth sharing here.

The fix:
Inflate the weight. If you are shipping 150lbs, call it 200. 500? call it 750. The freight calculator will now reflect something closer to what your actual cost will be. Same is true of parcels. Rather than flat rate, we now use the calculated shipping and bump it by 10-20% of the actual weight. This helps cover our variable costs and doesn't anger the eBay gods.

Now I know what some people will say. "That's cheating." or "You're ripping off your buyers." To those Codbags, I say this: SHUT UP! Shipping is not a hidden cost. Anyone buying any item over the internet knows exactly what they are paying for shipping before they buy it. So, codbag, here is a little trick I learned in Mrs. Peel's 1st grade class. Its called addition. You take the cost of the item plus the cost of shipping and that is your actual price. If that is cheaper than what you would pay for it locally you got a good deal. If not, buy it locally. We don't care.

In conclusion, eBay wants you to loose money on shipping. In fact they would prefer everyone offer free shipping because they charge a percentage of the final sale price, not a percentage of shipping. 4% of a $10 item with free shipping nets ebay $0.40. The same item selling for $5 with $5 shipping only nets them 2 dimes.

Ebay is greedy and they have a monopoly on live auctions. We are simply optimizing their rules to mitigate the pain.