Ebay's calculated shipping is off?

[3islanders]

I diligently weighed and measured the item before listing it... used "calculated shipping" for Canada... and eBay charged the buyer $3 less than what Canada Post's website says it's going to be.  Plus eBay and Paypal take their chunk out of honest shipping fees so you're really shipping at a loss.

Are there any tricks I'm missing here?  You don't know what eBay's going to charge the buyer, based on their postal code, till they've paid you.  Short of trying to guess at a flat rate which is going to be inaccurate for most of the postal code zones in Canada, what do you do?

[3islanders]

Well, now I can't find anywhere to reply... should have put this on the discussion section instead I guess.
Yes, I know the difference between regular and expedited shipping. Expedited was for the orchids.
I don't use any "cough" (??) automated shipping. I write the address on the box and take it to the post office with my VentureOne card. Wow, low tech eh!?

[reallynicestamps]

Also are you using the Paypal/Canada Post shipping label? The Shippo shipping label? or the Canada Post Snap Ship labels?

All of those offer various discounts on your shipping costs.

As do *cough* using manual labels and discounted mind postage purchased on eBay *cough*.

The amount on the Canada Post website need not be the amount you have to pay for shipping.

[thestuffofchris]

I checked a couple of your sold listings and one quoted Regular Parcel and another quoted Expedited Parcel. Are you making sure to compare the same services between the eBay listing and Canada Post's website? (Regular compared to Regular; Expedited compared to Expedited) If your listing, for example, is charging the Regular rate but you're looking at the Expedited rate on CP's website, that could result in it appearing like they aren't charging the buyer the proper amount.

[reallynicestamps]

Should we assume you used metric measurements?