Now for something more relevant, but should this be in Off Topic or General Discussion?

Anyway, let's see the shipping for a small MH bulb on 1000bulbs.com:
Bulb: About 8 dollars.
Ground shipping: A measly $9! Costs more than the bulb itself.
Looking for something a little faster? It'll cost you, Priority shipping is a whopping $60. You can buy 7.5 of those lamps for the shipping cost.
Seek solace in other places, like Amazon, but make big purchases on the lighting sites.
Have you seen worse shipping costs?

Well not particularly more expensive. I recently bought a MV lamp from a website (I don't remember the website) and shipping was €22,50. That's crazy. Didn't even arrive within a month. However I remember scrolling through the website having all these NOS products, even having NOS ballasts that contained PCB's. Of course being way overpriced, but I couldn't find these lamps anywhere so I just bought one.

Well not particularly more expensive. I recently bought a MV lamp from a website (I don't remember the website) and shipping was €22,50. That's crazy. Didn't even arrive within a month. However I remember scrolling through the website having all these NOS products, even having NOS ballasts that contained PCB's. Of course being way overpriced, but I couldn't find these lamps anywhere so I just bought one.

Wow, that's a lot for slow shipping.

The quoted shipping for an order I just put in with 1000bulbs was $19 but it is a physically large order.  The place I find to usually have the nuttiest shipping rates is Electronics Goldmine as a small box (under a foot on a side) is typically well over $20.  International shipping is actually a lot cheaper in comparison at under 8 quid for stuff I get from England.

And how easy it is to safely ship 8 foot fluorescents?

Apart from buying from either within Canada, from England and often from continental Europe, shipping fees are astronomically high for a buyer in Canada. Furthermore, the eBay Global shipping programme adds quite a bit to the shipping.

An order on 1000Bulbs once doubled when the standard shipping was added. It wasn't particularly expensive things, a dozen starter sockets and a couple of PL sockets.

Then there are the companies or sellers that simply refuse to ship to Canada.

There are also sellers or companies that only ship UPS or other parcel service. They hire a broker for customs clearance. You pay some 50 dollars to clear customs, and the duty paid is often much less. I once paid 45 dollars to a broker to pay less than 5 dollars on duty. All this is on top of any shipping charges which would already be high.

Quite a bit ? I seen cases where the costs of GSP are more than the cost of the item itself. Talking about things in the order of $few 10's...$100 (replacement parts for laptops)

I've seen it too. I try to avoid buying such items but sometimes it is the only source. I once bought key blanks that ended up costing me 11 dollars apiece ! They weren't high security, just the standard (but not so common) type.

Buying in bulk usually makes shipping cheaper for the amount of items you get.

Atleast for things i buy it is not related to the bulk order itself, but to the fact that ordering one thing can be from anywhere in the world, but ordering bulk of small stuff (capacitors, ...) is allmost always from China, and they give free shipping on nearly everything there

Atleast for things i buy it is not related to the bulk order itself, but to the fact that ordering one thing can be from anywhere in the world, but ordering bulk of small stuff (capacitors, ...) is allmost always from China, and they give free shipping on nearly everything there

That's another point. And Amazon Prime always has free shipping, too, but you usually can't get many lamps with that.