>>11327418It's really not more fees. It's actually clearer for buyers because you don't have to work backward like you did as a seller.
If I as a seller needed to make, say, $20 on a figure, I had to come up with a number that, with X% removed, would be over $20. If the fee was just on the item, that's a simple math problem. Except shipping* and, later, tax are _variable_ by location. So sellers often used the maximum distance and maximum tax rate as the basis for pricing.
*Technically, sure, there's flat rate Priority. But it's so expensive because the USPS is doing the same calculation that you're trying to avoid. It needs to be enough that they don't get killed on long distances but not so high that it suffocates short distance shipments.
What that eventually does is make local(ish) buying and selling more expensive than it should be because buyer in OH is overcharged by a seller in NY afraid of losing their shirt shipping to CA.
But there's also the psychological component. When it was a seller fee, it was hidden. If buyers blamed anybody, it was the greedy rotten seller. But when they put it on the buyer side, buyers not only suddenly notice the fees, they know where they're coming from - the platform.
The whole arrangement needs upended. Too many middlemen trying to take too big a slice out of a shrinking pie. That's why I got out. I had Hasbro, EE, eBay, PayPal, USPS, Uncle Sam, all grabbing so much that I couldn't afford to buy the stock to sell. Now they get nothing.
My gut feeling is alot of people tried to sell as retail distribution worsened, got their asses handed to them to varying degrees, and now we're seeing the consequences of low supply, high prices, etc.
