Bad news for those of us you purchase from US Ebay merchants and stores. USPS has dramatically increased the price of a lot of its services, especially shipping for low weight items. Your average package send via First class mail will cost $7 more now. They seem to have adopted ripoff Australia Post pricing policies :(
Some examples:
1 ounce package from $3 to $6.55 (over 100%)
6 ounce package from $7 to ~$12
16 ounce (1 ounce ) from $14 to $16
48 ounce from $24 to $32
Flat Rate Small Boxes & Envelopes from $17 to $24
Priority Rate mail hasn't been affected so badly - the increases are between 5 and 10%.
About the only thing we as buyers can do is to wait until we are ready to purchase multiple items from a vendor (eg purchase 3 bottles of fish oil and 1 bottle of multivitamins). There now is a great disparity between the cost of purchasing just 1 item at a item, as opposed to purchasing them all at once.
I guess this means more people shall be buying from China now since their postage rates for low rate items are extremely cheap. I haven't checked to see if Amazon have changed their pricing policies, or how it has effected shipping rates for new and second hand books on Abe, or other stores that post from the US (Fishpond, TheNile, Bookworld).
Feel free to update this thread with info on other shipping price hikes.
shipping increased by nearly $8 for a website I regularly order from! not good news at all, $27 shipping is a rip off.