I'm very familiar with shipping prices from hardwood dealers. I buy my wood almost exclusively online, because the local places aren't cheap enough. We've already been over this, and I'm not trying to get off on a tangent. I'm just trying to convey that I'm very familiar with the shipping pricing structures of all the online dealers. I know the cutoffs in length and weight, and i almost never hit those cutoffs anyway since i mostly only buy small volumes of high cost species. Most of what i build only needs 24" length at most, so i never shop long boards. And it's rare that i even approach the weight limits.
I ordered 8bf cumaru and 11bf angelim pedra from advantage. These are high volume orders compared to that i typically order. I think I've only ordered over 8bf in a single order 3-4 times ever, but i regularly use the weight cutoffs as a limit to how much I'll order. In fact, 8bf cumaru and 11bf angelim was the max i could order before shipping skyrocketed, and that's why i chose to order that much. But having walked this line many many times with other dealers, i know how they compare to advantage, and there is no comparison. Advantage is 100% padding the shipping costs. Their rates are so outrageous compared to the competition. In fact, i even checked what the rate would be to send my order, both over and under the weight limit, and in both cases the consumer shipping cost quoted by UPS was less than what Advantage charged. Granted, the under limit quote was very close, but the over limit quote was substantially lower than what Advantage charges.
I absolutely refuse to believe that everyone else is eating shipping and advantage is the sole dealer offering true shipping costs. Aside from the fact that I've confirmed that not to be the case already, there's also no way the small family owned dealers like ocooch are eating tons of shipping fees on top of already having the lowest prices of anyone... they'd be out of business if that were the case. Some dealers eat shipping costs of course, and i take advantage of the ones with free shipping deals whenever i can, but they can't all afford to do that. The only viable explanation for advantages high rates is some kind of technical glitch. I had a similar issue with the quebracho i ordered from Italy, but the dealer acknowledged it was an error and quoted me a far more reasonable shipping price. However, given my order experience with advantage so far and the fact that this is a domestic shipment from 1 State over, it would seem to be highly improbable that there's any error. They wouldn't even release a replacement order until they received the old order back. Who does that when you screw up an order? They're just scummy people, and it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.
