I have seen this before. Sometimes the manufacturer or marketer does not want to sell items direct. But they are afraid to discourage it for fear of loosing buyers. The problem is they put themselves in a Catch 22, and still loose a customer(like you).

What a lot of mfrs. want to do is to encourage their consumers to buy from the distribution system, rather than buying direct. That is what this sounds like to me. Why else would they charge you a ridiculous price fro shipping?? Certainly you guys have noticed that most of the time on small items the mfr. price to us is higher than a distributor like Cabela's or Midway. The mfr. wants to discourage a consumer from buying direct.

This sounds silly, but it is a truth to business. Sometimes a little too much in sales is a bad thing. They are forced to employ more people than they want to. They would much rather pack up and ship 500 packages to a single distributor, than to ship 250 packs of 2 bags to 250 retail customers. Tom.