Mildly amused by your response (confused/baffled). You say you are a low volume private seller, but one still shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth 
As a low volume seller It obviously doesn't affect you the way it does a medium volume seller like myself who has been forced to look at everything carefully, and then look again before putting anything up since the sudden surge in ebay fees. This twenty free items per month was only brought in at the eleventh hour by eBay in a desperate attempt to stop people swinging across to "the river site" en masse as a mass protest. Dispite what they claim, there was a marked drop in sales on certain items after the new fees were introduced. It is not for your benifit eBay so generously decided to have up to twenty items per month free. It was to stop the likes of me - medium volume sellers, from flying the nest. To us 20 items per month is no big thing.
I used to put up one hundred item on a fee weekend no problem - I have a float of about 130 puzzles before starting on the quality plates with certificates etc. and once the week was up, thought nothing of just relisting what didn't sell. It was no big thing, but when I suddenly found my insertion fees had more than doubled - up from 15p per item to 35p per item, it put things into a very different light! I now look carefully at what I'm putting up. By selective selling I've suddenly reduced my Paypal fees from not far short of £30.00 per month down to small change, so much so, I am now buying items on ebay as opposed to selling them..
It is not just the medium range sellers eBay have to keep happy. Business sellers are charged at a preferential rate and occasionally get a two hundred item free listing thrown in to try to keep them content, and quite right, too. If I have a particularly quiet month I'll grumble, but it doesn't affect me. It's just my pocket money. But a quiet month for a business seller - one with a shop, and a dud month does affect them - badly.
Must have been asleep, or going senile, probably the latter 
