Look, I don't want to sound ungrateful -- I'm not, trust me -- but they're reducing the shipping of everyone who is commenting about it. And not just by a few bucks. We're talking 50%+ of total shipping charges in most of the examples given. I don't care if the original high prices were CGL's doing or QML's, but if CGL is able to eat this much of the Kickstarter's shipping costs -- and especially given the uproar about it right from the start -- why didn't they just slash everyone's S&H by half to begin with?
And I'm not trying to be rhetorical, I'm honestly curious. If the answer is simply "we didn't want to dip into the excess revenue (you know, profit) so we could spool up the next round of products faster" that's a legitimate reply. So is "more money for ownership & employees" though that kind of response isn't likely to go over very well given the, shall we say, negative opinions that have infected elements of the community.