What's up with US shipping fees for li-ion cells?

I ordered 4x 18650s from liion wholesale. Good price for the cells but the cheapest shipping was almost $8 for usps parcel select - from PA to Ohio. That took the cost of 4 cells priced about $3.50 each to a total of about $22. My previous ordel in the spring of this year shipped for less than $7 via priority mail. What’s going on? I’ll be needing more but shipping fees have gotten ridiculous.

You can thank the post office. They made LiIon cells only shippable by ground unless they are installed in a device and passed on extra cost to the shipper. Most reputable shippers wanting to adhere to the rules for shipping follow their directions and end up paying dearly for sending cell domestically. There are a few on Ebay and elsewhere who don’t state what they are shipping and still getting first class, economy, or priority shipping rates because the package isn’t labeled correctly.

I also can ship the lithium batteries from china with DHL
the shipping not so expensive

I just bought 8 30Q’s from Liionwholesale. Paid for Priority, and was shipped with a device (18650 Fan). I know, it’s a completely stupid USPS rule. Obviously the device only fits one cell which isn’t installed. So nothing has changed packaging wise, except the way USPS manipulated the rules to jack the price of shipping up. Priority still goes by domestic airline and fedex air cargo, and the cells are packaged exactly the same way they always were. It’s just the bureaucracy saying “see, we are doing something about it”, but in reality, they did nothing for safety, and it’s completely meaningless.

That said, price per cell was still $5.00, was assured to get authentic product, and received them in 2 days, instead of a month. Basically, the extra cost of a beer at a pub.

The days of buying a couple at a time from LiionWholesale are over. You need to consolidate your orders to distribute the shipping costs .

It feels like a lot of items have higher shipping costs now. Not just batteries.