Personal service made the difference
I live overseas in Israel and wanted to buy my hobbyist husband a microscope for his birthday. I found exactly the microscope that I wanted at a good price at Microscope.com, but then when I went through the check out I found that the only shipping method available cost as much as the scope - too much to make it worthwhile. I started a live chat and asked if there was anything that they could do for me. Rhonda working on the live chat looked up other shipping methods, found a way that was less than half the cost, and set it up for me.
The microscope arrived on time, my husband has been using it ever since and it is even better than I thought it would me.