What I have noticed is that regardless of the rate, type of package or amount paid, every small package that has been shipped to me in the UK arrives and has never been opened (other than 2 damaged packets due to poor packaging which then arrived in the post office's plastic wrapper).

I am regularly shipped items that appear to have been mailed as regular airmail for $3-$4 and all seem to arrive. The issue appears to be getting past the clerk at the first point of contact with the post office in the USA, but thereafter no problems - and price paid doesn't seem to affect the time a chip takes to arrive either.

It is one of the reasons that I never buy from people who only use EBay's Global Shipping programme (and why I do not subscribe to it when selling) as that seems to charge circa. $20 to ship a chip to the UK - not sure who is making the money on that service, but when I know that a chip with maybe a fifth of the postage costs will arrive ok, why would I pay that much???

The only issue I have ever had is with values on the package which determine the duty costs when over a certain value - once when a well intentioned seller put a much higher price on a customs form in case the chip went missing and I got hit with a significant duty payment which is based on the value written on the package. The second issue was simply a badly written value - should have been $15 but the PO insisted it said $55 and charged accordingly

Just my observations.

Jason