ORIGINAL: Shrike15
He is absolutely making money off of the shipping.
I live 20 miles away from him, and he refused to let me drive over and pick it up. That's a clear red flag that there's some shady shipping charges going on.
I also suspect some shill bidding is going on with his auctions (where they have alternate accounts to bid on their own stuff to drive up the price). Some of his auctions have one bidder that has bid on several of his auctions (once per auction), and they never actually win the auction. It's kind of hard to prove because eBay's privacy policies, but I have a pretty strong suspicion.
I don't want to get into a blow up and don't mean to flame you guys, but if you didn't think the shipping & handling was fair, why did you buy from the guy?
I'd guess he is using the mark up to cover fees, not really "make money",
Keeping things in perspective when you think about a $60 anything on ebay
Example of a final value fee calculation for an auction listing:
You sell an item for $60.00
For the first $25.00 you pay 8.75%, which is $2.19
For the remaining $35.00 you pay 3.50%, which is $1.23
For this item the final value fee is $3.42 ($2.19 + $1.23)
Paypal? another 3% or so on that $60 +$1.80
Insertion fee if you start at $.01 = $.15
So on a $60 transaction he has to pay $5.37 just in fees.
On a $100 kit? closer to $8.00
He could be just "Drop Shipping" these,, that is when they ship directly from a warehouse somewhere, not the location where you send payment or the guy does business. This is very common now a days online also. And if that's the case he is paying a comission to the service that processes and sends out the order too.
If you suspect Shill Bidding, you should report that to ebay ASAP, I've reported that many times myself. It's harder for you and I to detect, but Ebay can figure it out if you report it.
When considering the shipping cost for this item, remember this package is 44lb by UPS dimensional rate.
I find this hard to believe,, what was the box dimension?