I couldn't agree more! The cost of the item should be able to reflect the value of the item so that necessary fees are properly assessed. A small but growing minority of sellers on feebay transferring profit to shipping to avoid fees is what caused the change in policy there. When ebid becomes popular enough those things will happen more often here as well.
Although it can be said that all sellers play with both numbers to some extent in order to make their store more attractive. Offering free shipping is a perfect example, since everyone knows that no shipping is free. So is the seller being deceptive? Yet the buyers never complain in feedback about the price of the item being too high after they bought one with free shipping, now do they? :-) So I'm not even sure I'm opposed to the policy -- except for the obviously painful result of actual higher shipping costs, which are bad enough -- since 99% of all buyers really just want to know, "what is the total cost for me to get this item?" as is evidenced by the popularity of the "Total cost including shipping" search function there, and why it is so prominently displayed on auction pages here (thank you for that, btw!)
As a side note - Even with the institution of fvf on shipping, there's still plenty of motivation "over there" to place the money in the shipping column... insertion fees balloon like crazy, depending on your starting price. And for the truly deceptive sellers, offering refunds minus shipping means you won't bother trying to return it, but by offering refunds, their auction gets placed higher in Best Match listings. It is an *evil* system, that best match!
Here in the US, calculating actual post costs without standing in a queue has become next to impossible for some items, thanks to the new changes in regulations. And those that you can figure out are costing double what they were. With the new USPS shipping rates comes some changes to the definitions of mail types as well. An item I sold just last week and shipped to Canada for $1.28 will now cost twice that, because it's considered a parcel instead of a letter. I was warned of it at my post office just this morning. International buyers make up half of my customers, and I currently only sell to Canada/Uk/Australia. I'm not sure I'll be able to compete with UK sellers when shipping outside of the US.
I'd like to give a personal kick-to-the-crotch greeting to every member of my government who seems to have let the people responsible for our confusing tax rules design our new postal rules!