Bluearan rant

^^^

This!

Yes, some postage prices have gone up. Couriers have been increasing rates by 3-5% a year every year, plus adding fuel surcharges of up to 10% at times. We argue the case, but ultimately there is only so much we can say, and we have to cough up.

We are slowly tweaking our price structures, for a number of reasons, and we are where possible trying to adjust our prices to charge packing and posting appropriate to a product. Its a complicated process, and we are confident we will get it all correct, but along the way their might be a few hiccups which we'll be working on 

The paint in particular is something we have had to put an extra charge on, mainly because we are getting through a lot of packing materials and it adds a fair bit of time (and therefore cost) to the shipping process to pack the paint safely. We will continue reviewing prices on this, and if possible we will try to reduce them.

As has been pointed out already in this thread, most customers prefer to receive their paint tubs in one piece, and with the paint on the inside of the tub rather than the outside. This is something we are trying to make sure of.

Some of our pricing also takes into consideration the item value. If you buy a £300 speaker we normally have some scope to offer discounted delivery, in fact 'standard' delivery is normally free on most higher value items.  On £30-£40 of paint, we dont really have a great deal of space to maneouvre.  Please remember, the VAT man gets 20% of everything, the paint, the postage, the packing. P&P of £8.49 is £7.07+VAT. If you can buy the bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, and get someone to pack it and wrap it, and then get it shipped for less than £7.07  then you are doing well.

We are aware of a few syncing issues, obviously where this is our mistake we honor the price and complete the order if we have put the price wrong on ebay.

There have been a lot of price increases from many manufacturers this year, and updating our website is a very quick process, updating ebay, not so quick, and also not obvious if something goes wrong. In fact, we just received notification Fane are increasing prices approx 5-10% on 9th July. So there is another price rise to implement soon. The main problem is the pound is stuck at a very low value with respect to euro and dollar, and raw materials costs are increasing, and everybody (at every level including factory worker) wants a pay rise.

There have been a few lucky people who got some really good deals on ebay over April, May and June, but we think we have synced the pricing on almost everything now.