I just checked out what it would cost to buy one of the "I'd rather be cake decorating" license plates .. it's on sale for 6.50 which is a price I would be willing to pay .. until I got to the shipping amount ... I would NEVER pay nearly 10.00 to have a plate cover shipped to me! That's a rip!

speaking as someone who used to manage multiple warehouses and had to deal with shipping & shipping charges (both incoming and outgoing) on a daily basis, allow me to share that folks' perception that shipping charges should be proportionate to the size of the item is flawed.

A 4x8 padded envelope costs the same, no matter if you are shipping a $5 paperback or a $1000 diamond necklace. The cost of the shipping clerk's time, the equipment to weigh the package, various other warehouse tools all cost the same, no matter if we are shipping a $5 paperback or a $1000 necklace.

Not applicable in this case, but shipping is costed by either weight or space. A full truckload of wicker baskets will cost more to ship than a truckload of cement blocks. The reason is that the trucking company can ship (and I'm making up numbers just for illustrative purposes) 10,000 lbs of freight at $1 per pound = $10,000 per truckload. Wicker, which weighs nothing, might weigh in at only 3,000 lbs. But since the wicker takes up the entire truck space, the trucking company would lose money, so wicker is charged by space not weight (learned this when shipping caskets overseas .... I was shipping "Boxes of air" and paying for that "air" that was taking up space.)

Most folks tend to view commercial shipping the same as if they are shipping a pair of gloves to their niece .... gloves inside an envelope, stick a stamp on it and go. Commercial shipping has much and many other expenses involved.

People who ship things via ebay have learned this, sometimes the hard way, as they realized that shipping is MORE than the cost of postage .... it's the cost of boxes, envelopes, safe packing material, and more.