No, they've worked around that too -- now sellers typically include a [completely unrelated] 0.99p item as an option in the listing, which then moves them to the top of the price-sorted view.
Or on aliexpress, on items you’d usually buy multiples of, set the shipping to $cents for the first item, then it jumps to $$$ once you add a second to your cart.
Sometimes I’ve just bought individual items from several sellers as a workaround.
Usually when that happens, the shipping date jumps too, because it's chosen a faster shipping method. I'm not sure why but I'm not 100% convinced it's deliberate deception. However they also don't show shipping prices in the search view, and display the lowest-price configuration instead of the range.
Some of these would be tiny items. But yeah, on larger items, sometimes the shipping price changed dramatically once you add the 8th item to your cart.
I wish users could order stuff by sea for a discount. Sometimes I’m buying camping or sports stuff for another season and don’t need it coming airmail. Arriving months later can actually be beneficial. But I understand, too many people will lose their minds.
I usually go through the checkout process multiple times, if it works out cheaper, since I don't pay credit card fees per transaction. The buy it now button and multiple browser tabs are very useful for this.
I'm more annoyed by 90% of the search results disappearing when I sort by anything other than "best match".
