I'm not sure whether this applies to UK overseas shipping only or elsewhere in the world. I recently purchased some tools in the UK for shipping to France, the UK Ebay vendor charged only for internal UK freight but the company offered international shipping. So here's the rub, in comes good ole Pitney Bowes for international shipping, their costs represented an additional 33%+ for crossing the English Channel and delivering. The Pitney Bowes freight charges are horrendous so be warned of buying overseas on Ebay as you may get skimmed as they use this company for international freight/shipping forwarding. I'll use my own freight forwarding company in future which I've been using now for years and I bet they are far cheaper and more careful.

 

After digging around some more I learned in the murky depths that Ebay use Pitney Bowes as their international freight company and if you send many things internationally they go via Pitney Bowes management, Pitney Bowes don't do anything apart from the management arrangements and IT. The upshot being that Ebay never tell you about this even when a Pitney Bowes charge appears on your Paypal account without any authorisation and Ebay still deny or evade your questions.

Ebay and Paypal claim they are now totally separate companies, however, they both appear very cosy and incestuously working together to the extent that one and the other promotes each other for touting business. Very cosy IMHO

PS: A bit more info on the connection between Ebay and Pitney Bowes.

https://www.google.fr/search?q=is+th...hrome&ie=UTF-8

Seems I was correct.

 

eBay and PayPal have been two separate companies for a couple of years. You can thank Carl Icahn for that. He bought a large enough share of eBay to force out the CEO, Donahue, because he wanted to retain PayPal as part of the eBay family. Icahn felt PayPal was too valuable an asset to be kept under the wings of eBay. Hence the breakup of the two. Now, eBay is planning on replacing PayPal over the next 4-5 years with an upstart online processing company (the name escapes me now) base out of Europe.

I have a feeling what you're being charged for are broker fees when you have parts shipped internationally by eBay. I still handle all of my international shipping on my own and almost exclusively use the USPS as the carrier. This eliminates any worries about brokerage fees on international transaction. If you use FedEx, UPS or DHL, you may find yourself getting hit with additional fees shortly after you've received your goods. It's sort of the same thing you've experiences with Pitney Bowes.