Pretty sure it is going to be charged on everything.. including fuel surcharges. It would be nice if they would lower the percentage since they are going to charge it on everything.. maybe throw in PayPal for free as part of the package. But that ain't gonna happen. There was a model that worked well once.. years ago. A reasonable percentage on the sale price, so sellers could be agressive on offering things at low prices and buyers were happy. Volumes would probably be much higher if eBay didn't try to take such a big bite. If I want fixed price shopping I will go to Amazon.
There is a reason I haven't sold anything on eBay in over a year. Why should I do all the work, take all the risk.. and eBay make all the money? Obviously I wasn't selling stuff with high enough margins.. and I absolutely refused to gouge my buyers on shipping. So the solution was to just simply stop selling.
We gotta figure out how the Chinese fellers are doing it. Does eBay give them back door rebates for moving large quantities of low end produce? I bought something today from one of those sellers for 11 cents.. with free shipping from China.. and paid using PayPal. Maybe they make it up in volume.