I love JLCPCB, but shipping to Australia is often expensive so I don’t go ordering PCBs regularly, instead I try to bundle them up in one order.

The other day I noticed on the JLCPCB quote page that it’s possible to get PCBs shipped over for approximately $A2.30??? If this is true this would be a game-changer. Of course, this the “Global Standard Direct Line” option is definitely not a premium service, in fact in the past I’ve used them to order parts from LCSC because of the low price, but they did not deliver within this 16 business day timeframe, instead it was something more like a month.

The maximum weight for this $A2.30 quote is 1.5 kg. This should easily be met, right?

Indeed, this order of two boards has a mass of only 0.34 kg.

However, when I go to checkout the price is definitely not $A2.30…

My inital thoughts was that the quote from earlier was a very crude estimation. However, only selecting one of the two orders results in the quoted shipping cost.

This is great news. Breaking up an order like this, in addition to the massive shipping savings, means I take advantage of more SMT coupons since usually only one coupon can be applied per order. There is also the obvious benefit of no longer needing to bundle multiple designs together to justify the higher shipping, which means less scheduling issues when ordering multiple designs.