Dealing with packing materials, driving to the post office, etc., is part of the process. You can't expect to sell something without doing those things. I'm not saying a seller shouldn't be compensated for those things, but it's best to factor that kind of stuff into your asking price. The cost of shipping should be just that: how much it costs to have the post office ship the box. But many sellers figure that more people will look at their auctions if they have a low starting price, so they pad their shipping costs out instead.

This is especially aggravating when you're buying something small, like a single cartridge. If I'm buying a Genesis cart, and the shipping cost is $4.50, man, that's just rediculous! I once bought a set of three Gambit Heroclix on eBay (from a guy who lived like 40 minutes away from me, no less). He charged me $2.50 for shipping. I paid, not knowing what kind of charge it would be for something that small. When the package arrived, the label said 83 cents! 83 cents!! I was upset, and I e-mailed the guy telling him so. He said this was his first time selling Heroclix and didn't know it would be so cheap. He apologized and offered to PayPal me the difference, but I told him not to bother. I was happy with the apology (even though I'm not sure I believed him) and didn't want to bother with a PayPal transaction under $2.

Well, this ran longer than I'd meant it to, sorry. But my point is, when I see a seller obviously padding out his shipping price, it says to me, "Okay, here's the price of the item, and here's the price if you want me to actually ship the item to you." Not cool.