Stop bidding in auctions?
There are actually more Buy It Now and Fixed Price listings that there are auctions on eBay these days. With FP/BIN you can put items on your Watch List, do a comparison, and use Contact Seller to ask if he is willing to go with First Class International Letter or Parcel (which now apparently includes Confirmation of Delivery to Canada) rather than the expensive Global Shipping Program or Global Priority or UPS/courier.
Be careful, while USPS /Canada Post shipping is usually the cheapest, you are still going to be responsible for tax and duty on any purchase valued over $20 CDN, although Canada Post is notorious for not collecting this.
Also the Global Shipping Program appears to be the least expensive option for items valued over $100. The GPS is very new, and there is not enough information on how it really works yet (as compared to how eBay thinks it works.)
I would make a couple of suggestions.
When you do a Search, change the default Best Match to Highest Price and Shipping. This will cut out the low end carp, and it is faster to scroll down to your price range than to wade through thousands of ripoff listings to get to the good stuff.
And look at the seller's feedback and more importantly, her Detailed Seller Ratings. The lowest feedback an experienced seller should have is 98% and the lowest DSRs should be 4.8. But be aware that a new seller could be badly hurt by a single malicious buyer, and read the comments too.
About auctions, work out the total you are willing to pay. Reduce that by the advertised shipping to Canada. Bid that amount once and bid late.
You are allowed to Contact the Seller and ask if he will use USPS First Class International to ship to you and how much it will cost. If the answer is unsatisfactory or if your query is ignored, do not bid. It won't get better.
