Which courier do you prefer?

German mail is way cheaper than French mail, or mail from the Netherlands, to the US. There’s also a wide range of pricing from the UK to the US, depending on the seller- it’s not additional profit taken by the seller, but record stores seem to be able to use commercial postage, whereas through e-Bay, they have a system (I don’t know if you’ve encountered it) where the items are deposited or mailed locally, then containerized or shipped to the States for distribution through an e-Bay system. At least that’s how I understand it. And it is expensive. I had one seller from whom I bought three records at the same time, and suffered three shipping charges at full retail plus shipping rates- I had asked him to bundle into one shipment, but he claimed he could not do so. The records were fine, and priced right, but the shipping was exorbitant; I’m now making sure that a seller can do multiple purchases in one shipment. (I know volume/weight is more, but it’s not as much as X time more, per item).

Say, how come it costs thirty bucks to ship stuff to China but only a buck to ship from China to the US?

UPS has deilvered our packages to various neighbors, putting them in our next door neighbors garage one time when they were on an extended vacation. They leave packages on our lawn, out in the rain, in or around our garage, or in plastic bags tied to our rural mailbox. They are always a crap shoot. They did make good on a set of router bits that the delivery person said was delivered to a neighbor down the street who claimed he never received them.

Fedex has been reliable, leaving packages always on our front step, which is fine out here in the country out of sight of porch pirates. USPS has been uniformly reliable.

Being a UPS driver is essentially being a well paid slave .Some handle it better than others and some routes are 
more difficult than others .
In the last 5 years I have received at least 50 packets by UPS and they all got here one -way or another .
And driving in the Twin Cities is very difficult in your car much less a giant van !