I guess I come from a different world after 40 years in the shipping business... I have trouble understanding the fuss about shipping times and costs... shipping cost is a cost of doing business... regardless of whether you are a full fledged small business or just doing a hobby business.
Even if you go to the local store and pick up your items, there was a shipping cost in getting the goods to the store...
As for the time involved, shipping takes time... there are the transportation companies schedules, the processing time, etc all are factors to the shipping times. There are factors that no one can control... example, my son is a long haul trucker... he recently left Indianapolis headed down I75 to Laredo... he was stopped just north of Little Rock because the road was flooded, turned back north to a detour that would take him around the flooding. Because of the detour, he was 8 hours late getting to Laredo. His delivery was on time because of the schedule, but if not for the flooding, he could have been earlier... a factor outside anyone's control.
In the question of first class vs priority mail.... both classes will generally leave the post office on the same truck... the priority may be handled faster once it reaches a sort station, but it leaves on the same truck.. just in different colored bags. Back in the '70's when I worked for an airlines, we flew a lot of "Green Mail"... mail in green bags - first class mail..... right along side the air mail in orange bags.... you paid a premium to fly our mail in that orange bag.
The significance of $3 doesn't escape me as I will choose the lesser costs on my orders, because when you are ordering $30-$40 at a time, $3 is a significant cost... but back when I was in the industry, it wasn't unusual for my shipping invoices to be $10,000 or more, so $3 was insignificant. I haven't had the pleasure of buying from Dawn or Ed yet, and it may be a while since I've cut back on my pen turning significantly and I have an abundance of bowl and pepper mill blanks, but I would probably choose the lesser cost and not worry about the time involved in the shipping...