How does e-bay get away with charging the seller for shipping costs?

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

using ebay's international shipping is incredibly lazy, especially in the sports collectibles world where 99.9% of your international sales are only going to Canada. I have shipped some 1955 Topps All-American football cards to the UK, but buyer's like that understand they're the exception and are usually easy to work with.

[ValKehl]

Phil, if I remember correctly, it has been a few years now that eBay and PayPal have been applying their % to a seller's shipping charge, in addition to the price of the item sold.

I don't understand what you mean when you say "I am making nothing on these shipping charges, all goes to USPS, FedEx, etc." My wife and I have sold a variety of items on eBay for many years. We only ship via the USPS, so I am not familiar with FedEx & UPS. We charge our purchasers the USPS retail prices, whereas eBay/PayPal charges us the discounted USPS commercial prices, thereby usually leaving us enough to cover and frequently more than cover the eBay & PayPal fees. And, for Priority Mail shipments, eBay provides the seller with free USPS insurance for items valued up to $100.
Val