Busting Scams - From HYIPs to Identity Theft Insurance

Today I was looking for the lowest price on a 1GB SD memory card, and started with the techbargains section of pricegrabber.com (which as you will see, I highly recommend).  Pricegrabber showed me both the price and the S&H charge (along with Tax!).  It then points out the "best deal" -- assuming you're only going to buy one of them. 

In this case, pricegrabber recommended one merchant with free shipping and handling as my "best deal" at a total cost of $8.50.  Of course, free shipping is not really "free,"  it's just built into the price.  If you buy a lot of something like a memory card, those "free shipping" deals are sometimes not that great.  When I pursued my "best deal" and tried to buy 10 of them, I found out the cost was $85 (of course) -- which I didn't find out until the very end, after I had entered my credit card information.

Another company in pricegrabber's list had a VERY low price per unit, and a reasonable shipping charge (i.e., possibly the ACTUAL COST OF SHIPPING).  And when I ordered 10 units, the cost to ship 10 was LESS THAN TWICE the cost to ship  1 unit.  Makes sense for something that weighs less than the air in LA.

Basic gradeschool math: $8.50 < $5.35 + $4.90S&H BUT 10x$8.50 > 10x$5.35 + $8.18S&H ($85 vs $66)

I was happy and feeling how clever a shopper I was ... until I checked out the best deal on Buy.com.  I saw a deal there for $1.99 for a microSD with SD adapter *** :-o "HOLY CRAP" *** I thought, this was amazing.  A GIG of flash for 1.99???  At that price I could tile my bathroom with the silly things (scary thought).  So I quickly went to the site and saw... a S&H charge of 6.95.  Damn.

"No problem," I thought, I'll just order 100 of these puppies so S&H is a smaller percentage of the cost.  And then I'll  flip'em on ebay..Hehehe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_____WRONG_____!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Ok, I mean REALLY !?!?! 
Are they REALLY going to ship me 100 little boxes?

REALLY? Or do 100 SD cards weigh 200 lbs?

I've had enough of this.  TV and the Internet have been doing this for years, and it's gotta stop. These companies are just hiding their markup in the "handling" part of shipping and handling.  It's why UPS and the USPS have special ways to hide the shipping costs when you print out your labels.  It's a friggin' conspiracy.

There should be some basic rules out there about this S&H game.  How about this:

  "Shipping" should be the cost of shipping.  Handling should just go away, and get built into the price, where it belongs.  Anything else is just plain misleading.

Finally, some remarks to the vendors:

Buy.com -- c'mon guys, get your act together.  This is ridiculous

Pricegrabber -- nice job.  Why not go the extra yard and let me specify a quantity.  Then, you will be as gods... 

 Do your math.