Norm, have you ever tried to post something to China? I sent a small part over there once to see if a Chinese company could replicate it. I ended up changing my mind, because even though they could make the part for about $1, they demanded a minimum order of 500. So all of a sudden it got far too expensive and I knew I would never be able to sell the rest. The crazy thing was the postage. To air mail a single part to the address in China cost me a small fortune in itself. I recall it was something like $60 for the postage, and that had only basic insurance cover and no tracking. But the Chinese company sent the part back to me for nothing. When we go on ebay nearly all those Chinese ebay ads offer "free shipping". So what we have in the Western world are highly inflated postage prices, mainly because so many people demand insurance and tracing. But even basic postage has gone through the roof. I wonder how long it will be before our postage services literally price themselves out of the market? My guess is if lots of people suddenly stop shipping parcels because it becomes too expensive to do so, suddenly the postal services will be forced to lower their prices again.
