Despite my previous gripe, I looked at the royal mail charges, and it does look like that's the charges, and the signed-for add-on is $7.50. It is what it is, the seller gets to pick it and we pay it, I guess.

I have been waiting 2 weeks for a stone, and having had the experience of our customs before, figured that it might be the stone sitting in NY as opposed to royal mail taking a while (I once waited 5 weeks for a package from japan to get through customs, despite the fact that it was in new york 3 days after the seller in japan shipped it from a very rural area - it arrived at my door unopened - who knows what they did with it for 4 weeks).

Anyway, the seller confirmed that royal mail got my big LM to New York in one day - 1/24, and our customs is playing with it or ignoring it since. My apologies for griping about all but the signed for fee (which I still don't like, but that's the way it goes).

So feeling less gripey about it, I ordered the last wide (non-purple) slate hone that he had that was listed as finer than the LM. It'll be interesting to see how it does vs. my finer japanese stones.