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the one shop that carries some useful obscure parts
That's a costly business to be in, so it's churlish to complain that they charge postage separately rather than just doubling the item price on anything under a fiver.
Their p&p charge is a perfectly reasonable and accurate reflection of the cost of putting something in an envelope and posting it.
gbj_tester-
I agree for the most part. I can only imagine what a "four-candles" their stockroom is. On the other hand some other retailers do have one step down from the £3-4 postage band and only charge £1-2 for something as small as a bolt, clip or quicklink. It's just slightly irritating for SJS not to have that extra band of postage. My guess is that a huge amount of their business in small obscure parts is by post, so it just feels quite clunky to have flat rate postage that covers everything from a single washer up to a set of brake levers.
ffm
I enquired a while back whether there was a thread specifically to collate non-urgent things that people wanted to buy from SJS, so they could all be bundled up together and then the person receiving them could do a round trip of London dropping stuff off (assuming you're in London). It's a pain that the one shop that carries some useful obscure parts charges £3.50 to post a bolt.