I feel transparency in pricing is more valuable to the users. I've sold items that cost more to ship than they were worth; the problem is that if they choose to return the item I would eat the shipping cost if I offered "free shipping".

The result is that bulky worthless items have lopsided price/shipping. Ebay offers the UI tools to show users the bottom line and they can make an informed decision.

But you can just charge for shipping a return.

And like I said I don't use eBay anymore, but back then, they didn't give the tools. You could only sort by listing price without shipping included.

If they now offer tools to include shipping in the search, then sure.

If it was a $5 item that cost $10 to ship, they are still out the $10 though. Buyer might pay return shipping but the seller has to refund the $5 and isn't getting that $10 back. I'm not aware that Ebay would allow you to have a 200% "return fee".

That's a fair point.

in the late 90s i sold dave matthews band bootlegs from their concerts on ebay. Ya not legal but I did it in college to make money since I had a cd burner.

If I remember correctly ebay didn't take a percentage of the shipping only the sale. So I'd sell it for $5 but charge $25 for shipping and they only took a % of the $5 so I'd keep a lot more money

Yep, that was part of why people did it.