[jaclaz]

>This is well-known to anyone who ever looked into AliExpress and other Chinese online stores. Most of the stuff you can buy there has free shipping to pretty much everywhere

And there is - just for the record - a perverse incentive to multiply packages.

Here in Italy there is an import duty exemption set at 22 Euros, so what often happens with free shipping via Postal Service (unlike what you would do on local (EU) online stores, where you try to get as much as you can from a same seller to minimize postage and handling) is that people order single items from different vendors, so that each single packet is lower than 22 Euros, and they have the bonus of being sure not to pay any import duty.