I have sold a lot on eBay, and let me tell you their shipping tool is convenient but it costs you a bunch of money. The discounts appear good, but the final bill is never what they quote. You ship an item and they say shipping will be $8.50. The actual bill only hits your account weeks later after the package has been delivered and you've forgotten about the quote. The bill is almost always more than they quoted. I hung onto my emails showing the shipping amounts and compared them to the actual charges and they are almost never the same, and are usually higher. The final straw came when a package was $70 more than quoted. Yes - $70! And there was no explanation, no accountability. I contacted eBay who assured me they would look into it and contest the charges - of course they did nothing and I just had to pay it. I still have no idea what the charge was, though I ASSUME it was an oversize or overweight charge, I just don't know because they never told me. And I know the package was exactly the size and weight as disclosed but figure UPS had some oddball charge they can tack on when they feel like it. The problem is the opacity and lack of accountability since eBay is just a middle man disguising the reasons behind these charges.
I decided to try Pirate Ship - I'd discovered them thanks to a fellow GRMer's recommendation and had good luck shipping non-eBay stuff through them. I added UPS capability to my account and tied it into my eBay account. WOW! The shipping API works perfectly, it pulls up your paid orders and all you have to do is enter the size and weight. The quoted price and discount is basically identical to what eBay quotes. But get this - the quoted amount is actually what they charge you! Crazy, I know! The charge is immediately applied to your credit card on file and it is exactly what they said it will be. And after two months + of doing this, I can say that there are no BS after the fact price adjustments or bogus additional charges to your card.
And, if things do go south, the best part is it's not handled through the same platform as your sales, so you can sever the relationship or even burn a bridge if you have to while still preserving your ability to sell on eBay. Which, like it or not, is still the biggest platform for selling random junk accessible to us the general public schlubs.
I get no money for this recommendation and actually encourage you to look for other shipping providers that use the eBay API and recommend them here. But the biggest take-away should be: please for the love of all that is holy do not use the eBay shipping tool. It would have saved me hundreds of dollars over the last few years if I had not used it.
