Ebay Global shipping policy is broken. Does anybody care?

I was looking to buy this plastic item for my laptop. Now this is a very small item, the size of a medium stamp, and very light. It weights about 2-3 grams. I do not know the current post office costs, but you could put it in an envelope and send it across the world and nobody would give it a second look or thought.

The postage cost however mentioned in ebay 34.55$. I asked the seller why it is so high and they told me that within the US they ask 3$ postage (which is normal I think) but for sending it abroad they need to do it through a logistical service(?) and that is their cost. 

On other Ebay thoughts, they demand import charges for items send within EU even though some countries do not impose such charges and even though (I think) second hand items below a certain value shouldn't have import charges either. A chat with a UK Ebay representative told me that this is imposed by the UK government and it is for all products from the US. I do not understand why products from China or Hong Kong do not have similar charges. (But forgot to ask that last question).

Now I would understand the need to throttle a bit Chinese merchant expansion to Europe. Ie cheap items flooding the market strangling legitimate businesses. But the need of imposing such high fees on second hand items from USA is completely bafling. I guess some middleman is getting rich, but then again thats a free market. You don't like it you don't buy it. True, but this means that Ebay is loosing a huge amount of potential sales not due to piracy as some claim for music/movies, but from people deeming that for example paying 35$ for postage for an item costing 1$ is absolutely nonsense no matter the excuse.

I hope someone on Ebay is reading and correcting things.

DOES PAYPAL MAKE MONEY FROM CURRENCY EXCHANGE?

So here is my experience.
I am a frequent ebay buyer. I mean lots of stuf I need, I can find on Ebay far cheaper than my local market, if I those are available in my local market which is usually not the case.
So OK, I get it, ebay and paypal since they are one company, provide a global marketplace with prices far lower than average and a vast variety of products. However I would like to be a little bit more transparency in how they make their money.
To the point. Ebay provides an "aproximate" price in my currency, in thes care Euro, when the items unde consideration are listed in US dollars or other currency. If you decide to buy the item though, you go to paypal which decides how much you will pay in your currency, and more often than not this price is higher than the "aproximate" price shown in Ebay.
Now I do not know how their websites are structured, but it is reasonable to assume that the exchange rate comes from somwhere and is used for those calculations.
for example:
retrieve exchange rate from www.exchangerate.com, calculate price depending on currency, show price on listing, update every 10 minutes, loop.
I cannot for the love of God understand why would Ebay show a different exchange price from Paypal. Also why all the times I have noticed a discrepancy the price I pay is higher on Paypal than the one shown on Ebay.
Now a couple of pennies, wouldn't constitute a problem for me, but 2-3 euros seems like a robbery in my book when considering the global scale of the business.

Now Ebay makes money from listing fees.
Paypal makes a % of money from sold products.
Both say that they do not charge buyers, although of course buyers are those paying the fees, since the products on ebay tend to sell for a bit higher price than on the sellers personal e-shop websites. And all that is well, as long as it is known to the public.
But when paypal charges more than whats shown in Ebay, doesn't that mean that they make money from currency exchange as well? Which in the end is another fee for the buyer to bear? Last time I read the charging policy of both websites I do not recall anything of the sort.

And unless paypal and ebay want people to belive they rip them off every step of the way, better make that difference in shown and paying prices go away. Assuming of course they do care.

EBAY IS BROKEN

I was trying to contact an Ebay seller the other day and recently in order to do that you have to use a captcha number. Well, this feature does not work. I must have entered 6 or 7 different numbers and each time the outcome was wrong. Not because I entered the numbers incorrectly. Then it occurred to me to listen to the numbers just in case, and voila! The audio numbers were totally different that the numbers I was seeing on my screen. Eventually I managed to send the damn message, but not before running out of patience.

Ebay buying tips

When buying stuff on Ebay especially stuff sold from Asian countries, is best to look for the needed stuff in more than one Ebay site. For example look for the same part in both Ebay.co.uk and Ebay.com.
Most times Ebay.com has returned better priced objects than the same objects priced in Ebay.co.uk.
Plus one could gain a little from favorable the exchange rates as well.