Rubber tip on the brake rod
Come on, man. Sometimes it just feels wrong to pay through the *** for something so damned simple. The grommets probably cost less than a dollar each to make but somehow it is acceptable to pay 20 times that to buy one and have it mailed to you?
I retired from construction making over $60/hr plus all benefits so I know that nobody works for free. A reasonable person should be willing to pay a reasonable price. If an envelope and postage is $3 and the grommet itself retails for $3, why the extreme inflation of the price?
We have all seen instances where shipping rates have exploded but ....
As some know I'm making unobtanium parts for our cars. If I was to account for the CAD design time, Benefits, Electricity, Water, Nat Gas, Space Rent, My time to have the parts produced, my time to finish some of the parts, my time to process an order, my time to package the order, the cost of packaging, my time to get it to a shipper, the shipping costs, Insurance, LLC costs, Fed, State and local tax costs and fees, I would have to charge hundreds for a $2.00 part. If I was making and SELLING 100,000 of each part that would be a different thing, I would be able to sell the $2.00 part for $25.00 to $50.00.
I would love to do this for a living but it is financially not feasible!
It really does not matter the cost to produce the part, be it $0.50 or $50.00, or your perceived value of the part or how much the part retails for, the overhead and shipping are going to be a basically fixed cost per item sold.
Keep in mind none of us are getting any younger, the parts we buy will out live us.
On small parts that are inexpensive when posable buy them with other stuff even if I don't need them right now.
As to $10.00 shipping on a $2.00 part, sometimes its the cost of our hobby, can a home made part work perfectly fine, sure and I have done it several times.
And I am in no way pointing fingers at anyone or questioning their decisions, I too have experienced the same thing, in fact I just spent 32.00 for a plastic water squirter for my minivan. I saw generic parts for $5.00 but opted for an OEM style part. It will fit better and look stock.