I kind of feel lucky because BPAL was pretty much the first company I placed frequent orders with other than amazon, so I didn't bat an eye at the shipping because it didn't seem high to me since I had no other reference. I sighed at it, but I accepted it, and now it just seems normal to me because I'm used to it with them. They do ship everything via priority mail, and they're astoundingly generous with samples: Two samples per bottle or every six imps ordered, up to twenty samples (at least I think that's the limit) -- and then they usually switch to free *bottles* past that. So if you order five bottles, you get ten imps. I once placed a decant circle order that was so big I had *five* free bottles on top of twenty free imps. On the down side, you don't get to pick your freebies, so you might end up with something you hate or already have.