Shipping costs- WTF

My first education with shipping was similar.  I found the pricing for boxes and bubble wrap ludicrous.  One of the attractions of the shipper I chose was a local drop off.  Turns out only the main shipping offices were the only place one could print the QR sourced shipping label.  Into traffic hell.  At least I could print the code myself and drop the boxes without a line at that point.  

Got my own boxes bubble wrap and tape though and saved most of my sale.  I would have lost a good third of my money just to shipping.

Get a Fedex account and request ground shipping.

Simple answer: Always ship via FexEx with your own account. You sign up for free online and establish your own account. The process will take you less than 15 minutes.

Then you create a shipping invoice yourself and then attach the shipping invoice (same as the store provides) to your shipment.

The shipping price is far cheaper when you ship under your own account. I’ve shipped under my own account since 1996, when the internet became commonplace. Why anyone would use these mom and pop locations, who are in business to make money, which I’m not against, is beyond me. I’m simply not paying them extra to do what I can do on my own.

And how can any audiophile who commonly ships items, which occurs every day in this hobby, not be aware of the price difference between shipping on your own account vs shipping at a FedEx or UPS outlet? That’s very puzzling.

1996, is when I created my own account. Did I say that? Why’d I do that? Because the shipping outlets charge too much.

Just read the overseas shipping via FedEx “secret” about their GREAT RATES option and telephone number to call. I’ve probably used the GREAT RATES option to ship a dozen or so times. And each time it saved me over 60, sometimes 70 percent off the shipment price. 
 

I’ve never seen the GREAT RATES number advertised. But I found out about it many years ago when I had to ship an expensive jazz archtop guitar overseas. From Seattle it arrived in Australia in less than two days. My thoughts were, I’m happy I was born when the world was so interconnected. 

As others have hinted, volume is emerging as being at least as important as weight when computing shipping costs. UPS, USPS, and FedEx all went to volumentric pricing about five years ago.

One more recent development is the USPS’s "Cubic" pricing for parcels under 0.5 cubic feet. This pricing scheme is sort of flat-rate pricing for non-standard-size parcels. Pricing is determined by the dimensions and volume of a parcel, regardless of weight. This won’t help with the OP’s specific issue, but it’s good to keep in mind when shipping smaller but heavier chunks of metal.

In my experience, I’ve found this new pricing tier to be about 10-15% lower than Priority Mail -- which in turn is usually much lower than (sometimes even half that of) equivalent FedEx or UPS 2/3 day services.

But then there’s insurance...