Shippers should be required to display the actual shipping cost on the packages they deliver. The customer (buyer) actually pays this cost, and should know exactly how much it is.
Peace,
mangeorge
ought
Yeah, ought.
What about the cost of packaging materials? What about the time taken to package the purchase? I’m not completely sure what you’re proposing here. Do you think you’re paying too much to a company to send you stuff? Do you think a shipping company is overcharging? what?
When I first starting buying postage from Paypal for the items I sold on eBay, I left the price of the postage on the label. All it took was a couple of nasty emails that made me change my mind. The nastiest was over an 18 cent difference between the what the customer paid and the amount of postage on the label. If someone really wants to know how much something cost to ship, all the required info is on the label to use the USPS shipping calculator.
I have a good friend who’s been Ebaying since before Ebay and I witnessed someone who bought an expensive (more than two hundred dollar) item from him and then bitch that he charged $0.50 more than straight postage to put it in bubble wrap and a box. So he refunded the guy the .50 and shipped it just wrapped in brown paper.
No, the things you mention are handling. I have no problem with that, except when combined with shipping cost. I just would like to know what i’m paying. I don’t see why that would be a problem, or why a seller would object to me knowing.
I am pretty clear what I’m proposing in the OP. In fact, that’s all the OP talks about. 
I don’t use ebay. I didn’t even know “ebay” was a verb!
No, there are a lot of other online/mail order sellers out there.
Here’s a suggestion:
Shipping $20.00, Handling $0.50.
Or,
Shipping $20, plus $0.50 handling.
Completely not related, but in Italy, Google, “to google”, is now a verb: googlere. Strange world.
It’s also a verb in Esperanto: gugli. 
Note to lawyers fearing dilution of trademark: this means only ‘to search using the Google search engine’. It is not generic; no other method of searching is implied.
Ahh gotcha.
Yes, It would be good if mail order sellers would break down shipping/handling.
I can sympathize with the eBay comments above though.
The sellers wouldn’t even need to be involved. The shippers could simply put the price on the label, as the USPS does on some of their mail.
WRT commercial shippers, I definitely see the point. “Handling” should cost something, as the boxes and packing materials don’t come free, but there definitely is some gouging going on. For Christmas, my mother-in-law wanted a silk nightgown from a company called WinterSilks, so I ordered it. If it hadn’t been a gift, I’d have told them to go fuck themselves:
The item cost $40 or so, and the shipping etc. was about $11. When the box arrived I took the gown out of the box and weighed it, still in its plastic wrapper: It weighed six ounces. And that cost ELEVEN BUCKS to send me. It wasn’t fragile, large, oddly shaped, perishable, hazardous or anything else that should have cost any more than about $4. It was basically a long T-shirt. They should have rolled it up and sent it in a tube.
**There ought to be a law. **
When I sell things on eBay (which I need to start doing again) I figure out the shipping weight and use the built-in postage calculator, adding a handling fee which covers the cost of the packing material. I have on occasion made a mistake; one time I forgot to consider that a set of Time-Life books could be shipped Media Mail instead of parcel post, with no difference in delivery times, so I refunded the buyer the difference through PayPal. His feedback included the comment “honest seller”
I have ordered multiple items on eBay from a seller who offered combined shipping, and when the items arrived I noticed that the shipping amount shown on the package was actually less than I was charged.
I purchased a hard to find book on eBay and paid a nominal shipping/handling fee. When the package arrived I noticed that the postage was two dollars more than I had paid the seller. So I mailed him an additional check for $2.00. He thanked me profusely and left glowing feedback. 
Cool!
So, where’s my 2 bucks.