Action Figure Woes: Shipping Prices.

Normally when I want to buy a figure I can't find on retail, I hit Big Bad Toystore or Entertainment Earth. Well, Shipping Prices and options have become crazy. Holy shit, I haven't bitched about shipping prices since Mattel had Mattycollector.com!! Well, looks like I'll have to today.

A bit over 2 weeks ago I ordered a Super7 Ultimates Slash to make a Slash clone:

I had some store credit, let's ignore that. But this Slash was shipped to Puerto Rico, US Territory and part of the USPS Domestic Network. So shipping this Slash was $10.30 which is reasonable. Fast forward a bit over 2 weeks later:

I get an email about their sales and deals with free shipping if it's over 79 before shipping and taxes... I pick my fogures and I get a notification that the $79 deal doesn't apply to me, when it had before...

Well, Entertainment Earth is using DHL to partially transport the package and hand it over to USPS  to complete the delivery. $85 of figures had a shipping charge of $70-ish and with taxes, let's just say I emptied that car like a motherfucker. There was no way in Hell I was going to spend $160-ish for 2 figures. 

So I decided to do an experiment: Another Hypothetical Slash order, since I had a control:

$37 for shipping a figure that would end up getting to me via USPS, because DHL isn't doing the full delivery. The shipping is more expensive than the whole figure!! FUCK THAT SHIT, I'M OUT!  Shipping 1 figure is more expensive than the actual figure... that's a 269% approx increase in shipping prices for slower service.

Made a dummy order for Slash on BBTS. Here he was at full price. So obviously, he'd likely be more expensive than Entertainment Earth... but look, He has 2 shipping options to Puerto Rico.

$84.56 for the slow shipping and $88.81 for the fastest option.

The only reason Entertainment Earth is cheaper at the moment is because Slash is on clearance. If not, It would be $98.26 for a single figure that would be delivered by USPS... which adds insult to injury. I could understand if I was a "true international customer" but for USPS Purposes, I AM DOMESTIC, yet I'm getting Internationally raped.

Update:

BBTS is having an ultimates sale. I bought a Slash... it was about $45 shipped. I shouldn't have done that...