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Hello 'winepress',
Hmmm, nice to have a good whinge on the boards now and again, i'n't it. 
<<certain items have written in bold right below the listing "Free International Shipping." Yet . . . it is never free.>>
That's true. If you do much shopping on ebay, especially internationally, you just have to tell yourself that it is not likely to be
free. Click on the listing to see if it is at least affordable and decide from there. I suspect the seller has the listings set up for
shipping-included locally and unfortunately this is displayed sometimes.
Or maybe if the seller is choosing the GSP for international items, and the seller includes local ship costs, he might mistakenly
think he can use the GSP for international sales and that will be Free too.
Hey, don't laugh. I saw a US listing like that just the other day. It was cute, in away. He says "FREE Overseas postage - item
will be mailed through EBay's Global Delivery system." Haha, he actually thinks his items will ship Free around the world.
<<the Activity tab losing auctions I've recently won and not being able to see them again etc..>>
Do you mean the listing was removed by ebay? Did you get a notice from ebay about it? Sometimes a listing gets removed
for VeRO violations, or worse, the seller turns out to be a scammer and ebay/paypal finally caught up with him. In the first
case you might still get the item if it was paid for, in the second -- it's time to file for a refund.
<<to send a seller a question the system never recognizes the CAPTCHA the first time ever >>
I 'think' I know why that is, - it has something to do with timing. If you spend too long on the question (and it is not long at all)
you have to re-enter the numbers. Or if they are hard to decipher, click on Listen to the numbers. Some times I am sending
several "how much $$ to Canada" queries so if I quickly paste my same question the system accepts first time. If I pause to
type a detailed inquiry, I will have to send it twice.
That's my theory, anyway.
<<The notification system in eBay is absolutely useless. . .>>
It is certainly not fast. I have a couple of "followed searches" for items I want. It seems to take 2 days for the email notice
of a new listing to arrive. The last time I received an email about an item, I quickly logged in only to find someone else had
bought it the day before! Oh well. Serves me right for not personally checking in more often, I suppose.
But like you say, for highly sought-after items, the notification system doesn't help much.
<<The "Free International Shipping" bug which has been around for ages is yet another example of the poor quality of
eBay's software.>>
I don't know what listings you were seeing, but I'm wondering if they were GSP items because the GSP information is not
conveyed very well on the ebay site. Not just the Free shipping mistake, but the costs as well. The GSP listing might say
shipping is $14.86 but when we click on it we see that it is really $19.37 plus the import charges.
It's never the other way round.
Maybe the whole thing is simply too 'big', and hence more little glitches and bugs will show up on a system so large. Little
inconveniences, in my opinion, but definitely not enough to get wound up about. Well, it hasn't put me off shopping, not yet
anyway. 
"navigate to the actual listing and it is never free."
"never" is a big word.
While many listings will state "free shipping" when the "free" is limited to some countries, some sellers do in fact offer "free shipping" to international buyers.
I was one of them until my retirement last year. Every listing offered "free shipping" worldwide and it meant exactly that: no shipping charge was ever added regardless of the location of the buyer. Looking at many listings a few minutes ago I fund hundreds offering "free shipping worldwide".
Much depends on the type of products one sells: many can easily be shipped at low costs worldwide allowing the seller to absorb the shipping costs in the selling price.
So, please, avoid using "never" when it actually applies to those listings you looked at.
" Browse to the .com site."
Why bother? If you live in Canada, keep it simple: browse and buy on eBay.ca
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