Chef, don't know if you're still reading this....

I have known Dick Greenhaus (aka Camsco Records as of this date) for about 25 years and he is absolutely NOT a money-hungry person. He has refused since Day 1 to allow any kind of fee for use of DigiTrad or membership in the Mudcat Cafe.

He is also not the kind of person to carefully calculate his shipping charges to surreptitiously raise the price of his merchandise. He bought Camsco for love not profit, this I know... he talked it over with me and a lot of other people to be sure they didn't feel it would be a conflict of interest. He ain't gettin' rich on it. Wally wasn't gettin' rich on it either, and he was no longer willing to do so much work for so little money.

Dick (and maybe Susan Friedman as well) make up the entire staff of Camsco. That means that shipping CD's cuts into his time, there is no smooth shipping department whose job it is to get the stuff out. It also means that shipping may be late.

The thing is, nobody ever said that Camsco was cheaper than anyone else. It's just better, in the sense that Dick is dedicated to keeping the music alive. He handles a lot of requests every month that don't get him a penny: for example, referring people to obscure overseas labels if he can't get what they want as cheaply as they can order it themselves.

All those referrals, and his skill in finding the almost-lost music that people are searching for, are worth something. Some people are interested in contributing to that; some need to watch their budgets and find the least expensive source they can. It shouldn't be a value judgment either way.

I suspect from what Max said above, that the discrepancy in shipping fees was inadvertent. Or maybe it just reflects the fact that there's no inexpensive hired help to do the job.

In either case, it was the implication that the higher shipping fees are a scam of some kind, that ruffled a lot of people's feathers. Had you just asked, "What's going on? I can't afford to pay more...", I suspect you would have been spared the grumpy rebuttals that have upset you.