I have at least 8-9 PMs with him back and forth on this coupon thing. The only responses I got from him was "Read the OP" or "Let me know if you don't want the coupons". Charging 50% of a 0.1 coupon for shipping simply does not make sense, especially since this a gratuity for previous purchases. This is close to $35 for 5 sticks, when I was able to print the label for around $5. This probably discourages folks to re-deem the coupons so the sticks can be sold later for a profit.
I have similar misgivings about this practice. On a small scale (1-2 sticks) this may be reasonable, but for anything more than that, especially if we are supplying our own shipping label, it is simply unacceptable. Charging an extra .05 BTC would be enough to cover shipping for the first 14 sticks, although I realize that there are more costs involved than just shipping, but assuming he's processes thousands of these (it was 1300 from the first wave of coupons) he's made more than some people do in a year off of this promotion alone. Granted Canary is putting a large amount of time and effort into distribution of these miners, I don't see why he should be making such an inordinate amount of money off of this.
To those saying he was clear on the terms of the promotion, he was most certainly not. If you don't see what I mean, just look at the title of this thread. Additionally, with his past group buys he has offered the option of letting us supply a shipping label and (from what I can tell) reducing the markup per stick from .05 BTC to .01 BTC; why he is not offering this option for what was supposed to be a promotion is simply beyond me.
All you guys really have been wronged. Perhaps even abused. Why don't you buy direct from Friedcat. He probably won't bleed you dry on coupon offers.
