eBay informed developers that its shipping calculator "is not available under certain situations." Because eBay now relies on the shipping calculator to serve up search results that are sorted by total price, the problem is even more serious. It appears from the description of the problem that the calculator can't handle certain dimensional weight pricing (dim weight). What eBay does not say is what happens to those listings where the shipping calculator fails - do they go to the bottom of the "price plus shipping" sort results?

It's not known if that problem is related to problems with the calculator being reported on eBay Discussion Boards. A seller on the Technical Issues board reported a problem in which the shipping calculator charged a buyer $1 instead of $4.70 (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000586619&tstart=0&mod=1193511502102).

Another seller on the Packaging and Shipping board wondered why the shipping calculator sometimes displays "an astronomical price" on some listings. Another poster wrote that the problem had to do with the "Irregular Package" checkbox: "For some reason, it defaults to irregular and really fouls up the calculations. In fact, it makes priority mail cheaper and parcel post more expensive, costing me money on every sale." (http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000586662&tstart=40&mod=1193572494250).

eBay did not add a post on its Announcement Board to inform users that there was a problem with the calculator. According to the announcement to developers, there are no workarounds and there is no ETA for a fix.

http://dev-forums.ebay.com/thread.jspa?threadID=600003900