Because I'm travelling a lot and have other things to attend to it can take up to ten days after payment until I ship your orders.
I'll only charge the real postage plus a little fee of $ 0.50 to maximum $ 1.20 for packaging material.
I'll always try to find the cheapest possible way to mail the items, however I will send orders for more than $ 20 only as registered mail. This is for safety reasons. Also German Post postage grading makes it sometimes cheaper in spite of the extra € 2.05 the registration costs. You can send registered letters up to two kilos, but "small parcels" also up to two kilos - cannot be registered. To do this, you would have to send it as a big "parcel" (which can have up to 5 kilos). So Europe- and international "letters" might be cheaper and/or safer than "small parcels". This is a rather complicated grading system and hard to explain.
Hermes works fine in Europe and may be cheaper in some cases. As I am no dealer I can't have cheaper postage fares. Even if I'd be one it wouldn't be much less.