How do buyers know how much to pay for shipping of items coming from a foreign country? In general, sellers provide a choice of fees, often based on current charts easy to find on the Internet. Some sellers, however, particularly from China, Tibet and other Far East countries, do not seem to follow any chart and arbitrarily charge extremely high shipping fees. How to explain this and, most important, how to verify the authenticity of such fees? The answer is simple: it is not possible, because they are NOT based on any existing chart. Why, then, do they do this? That's what I asked one of my regular and otherwise reliable (Chinese) sellers some time ago, when I noticed he had tripled his shipping fees practically overnight. His answer was that he hadn't, although my invoices of previous transactions gave evidence of the contrary. As a kind of justification, he added that sales were very low at the moment, and that eBay's fees were very high. Since such fees only apply to profit from sales and NOT to shipping costs, starting prices of items usually costing a minimum of $100 were reduced to $1,99, and their usual shipping cost of $25 was increased to $80 or $100. By simply inverting the figures, the buyer pays the same, the seller gets what he wants and eBay, although not cheated, is fooled. The problem, however, doesn't end there. Some sellers get greedy and expect to obtain the same prices as in the "old situation", thus doubling their profit at the expense of the buyer, if they succeed. But if a buyer bids the basic $1,99 or just a little more (because of the high shipping rate he will have to pay), he will invariably be "outbid" for another dollar and loose the item. The identity of the second bidder (and winner), however, is not disclosed. Surprisingly enough (or not), the SAME item will reappear on the SAME seller's list some time later, the same buyer will be outbid again and again by a $1 margin, and the object will only be pronounced sold when the seller thinks it has reached what he expects, or at least a reasonable amount. The shipping rate, though, will remain excessively high, and this time the buyer will be the real fool. Needless to say, such sellers deny doing this and claim that the object in question was truly sold the first time, and that the second one is just a "very similar one". This, too, is untrue, as I have verified by comparing downloaded pictures of "both" items, which turned to be one and the same. Is there any way of preventing this obvious malpractice? Probably not, unless eBay takes the trouble to check every single seller on its list. What YOU can do, however, is quite simple: 1) Do NOT give in to unscrupulous sellers. If you do, you will end up ruining the business for everybody AND for yourself. 2) Whenever possible, download EVERY SINGLE picture of the item you intend to buy. By doing this, you will be able to keep a record of what you win and, if you don't, of which items are relisted even when you lost them to a previous "unidentified bidder" in an earlier auction. 3) Check updates of shipping rates for every country you deal with. You will be surprised at the differences from seller to seller! UTRECHT1953