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It's difficult to judge the actual cost of postage and labour involved in picking and packing small orders
It's not that hard, and it's the kind of thing the big outfits go into down to the last penny to find efficiencies.
I can't believe that it's the same for the two items I mentioned
It's not the same, but it's close enough that it's not worth adding multiple tiers of p&p (or s&h) prices. I mean, I could charge 6p extra postage for orders which go in boxes rather than envelopes and another 3p for orders containing caps rather than just covers, because I have to pick and wrap a screw, but it's easier to just make it £2.50 for everything and hope the extra picking and packing is covered by bigger things being more expensive so the margin on the item goes towards the extra cost of getting it to the customer.
gbj_tester-
It's not the same, but it's close enough that it's not worth adding multiple tiers of p&p (or s&h) prices. I mean, I could charge 6p extra postage for orders which go in boxes rather than envelopes and another 3p for orders containing caps rather than just covers,
I think you're overstating the granularity I'm suggesting. A 49p set of mudguard stay caps (weight = 5g?) would cost about 70p in postage plus packaging (tiny ziploc + envelope) + picking and packing/posing labour. A £10 saddle would cost at least £3 in postage plus more in packaging (jiffy bag/box + padding) + roughly the same picking and picking/packing labour. I think the £2+ disparity in the cost of getting those items out to the customer could be reflected in a single lower price band for postage.
My guess is that the thinking is that it's just not worth SJS's time to post anything if there isn't a bare minimum of profit e.g., £1 on it. For anything over a fiver that profit is probably in the cost of the item; for anything less than a couple of pounds that margin is made up in the P&P cost. That's totally understandable, but it is irritating when you just want the sub-Twix-cost widget to make something work properly.
ffm
It's difficult to judge the actual cost of postage and labour involved in picking and packing small orders. I can accept that it's not negligible, but I can't believe that it's the same for the two items I mentioned. With their current system it just feels like someone buying a single bolt is subsidising other larger orders. If that's what it takes for them to keep going then I'm not going to quibble; they provide a very valuable service, but they're not a charity.
I still think it's a reasonable idea to club together to get small items posted together though.