Just talked to my postal guy and learned something interesting. Of course keep in mind he is a biased source but he says UPS may have raised their charges because they failed to deliver on time during the Christmas season, and have been dropped by some major customers. Amazon and other companies have dropped them, and gone with USPS. I do know that is a fact. Not sure about Ebay but it seems a lot of what I get from them is also USPS.
Amazon's business to UPS was 1 billion dollars! Amazon is considering creating their own fleet and may become an UPS competitor. This is a dated article but...
http://fortune.com/2015/12/23/amazon-could-be-using-this-shipping-giant-much-less/The biggest taxidermist supply company in my industry (McKenzie) gives us the option to go with USPS now, as they are getting a lot of complaints on shipping costs. Our major industry website was buzzing with complaints that were originally blaming the supply company. Turns out it's UPS that is charging an arm and leg for shipping.
Just to make it clear on the extra charges. I don't mind an extra charge for pick up. But to have 4 of them that come to 89 percent more of the shipping charge is just too much.
