yes the shipping has gotten ridiculously expensive on Amazon.As a shopper, I've switch more to ebay from Amazon. One reason is that I do not have Amazon Prime and I can usually get free shipping off ebay.
yep I don't want to waste time playing games which more often than not are not in the buyer's favor anyway.I prefer the "buy it now" option to bidding, by far.
I don't buy enough (especially of anything expensive - I don't have any problems with $10 purchases either, but heck if I'm losing any sleep at night worrying about them coming a little late) and all options are reliable enough (amazon, direct through a retailer/manufacturers website, amazon marketplace etc.) not to sweat any of it too much really. As in my experience unless you run into a very rare crook out there (happened once for a book) everything comes in due time (and it's never yet come broken) even with slow shipping.