Thanks for the (obvious) opinions on taking account shipping costs when bidding.
But I think I found the information I was looking for with the applicable details:
Here's what we found for "A seller may be overcharging for shipping costs"
If you think an item's shipping cost seems excessive, try to find a better deal. You can also use our Shipping Calculator to research shipping rates.
It's against our rules to have unreasonable shipping charges in a listing, or to provide unclear or misleading shipping information. Learn more about our selling practices policy.
Sellers are allowed to:
Charge actual shipping costs.
Include the cost of packaging materials, insurance, and delivery.
Include delivery confirmation or extra services in the handling cost.
Sellers aren't allowed to:
Charge more than the maximum shipping costs in categories with shipping caps.
Charge a separate fee for insurance.
Charge for business-related fees such as employee wages or gas mileage.
Include contradictory or confusing shipping terms in your listing.
When dealing with the Global Shipping Program, remember that:
A seller only has control over the domestic shipping cost; the cost of international shipping and import fees is determined by the Global Shipping Center.
All costs are paid for at the time of purchase; no payment is needed upon delivery.
Regarding sellers not being allow to "Charge more than the maximum shipping costs in categories with shipping caps." This only seems to apply to 'media' type listings such as books, DVDs, etc, specifically found in this link:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/maxi...g.html#maximum
So it is against their "rules" to have "unreasonable" shipping charges (with "unreasonable" being the operative word).
The reason I had asked this? Because at one time ebay would not even ALLOW you to list something if it violated the maximum shipping price, and I just wondered if that was still in effect. I didn't
THINK it was (based on the lack of option for reporting this), but I just wanted to
KNOW the actual answer.
But I still believe they do take their cut out of shipping as well. This was a recent (last 2 years or so?) change to collect from sellers who would list cheap BINs with outrageous shipping. Unless that has now changed as well.