[msa]

If they make sense for you, then use them! I wasn't telling you do do otherwise.

But I have to disagree with the point that Samy's processing and shipping takes costs up to the $10.50 cost per roll that you named for using the mailers. And of course you would be mailing in batches at a time. It would not make sense otherwise.

...and yes, I have used mailers. In fact, I asked twice in this thread where to get them, because, as you said, they may be useful in certain situations.

Adorama and Unique, that I've seen so far, as I mentioned above. B&H should have them in stock again at some point.

As for the math: Whoa, hold on there. The $10.50 estimate I gave was worst case (Adorama pricing)

$5 plus return shipping of say, $2 (assuming first class.) We're at $7.

You're still out the shipping /to/ Samys, which is the same assuming you use a small envelope and keep it under 2 ounces with the order form (tight, but doable.)

That brings you to around $8.50 for a single roll.

Unique is asking...$7.86 per mailer. I'm not going to worry about shipping, since I assume you're buying well in advance and stocking up on some film while it's still available (like, say, EPP, or T64, or some other discontinued film.)

$7.86 + $1.39 == $9.25

It's a bit higher if you're ordering them from Adorama, but I think the point is that it's not really that much more expensive provided you're at low volumes.

In this case, given volume, I'm better off using the prepaid mailers, than pestering hotel staff for packaging material and finding somewhere to ship it.

Much easier to drop single rolls in an envelope and in a box. In bulk, of course, it doesn't make any sense. In this particular scenario, not having to deal with forms, packaging material, or shipping things while traveling is well worth the extra $1 or so.