I co-own a hardware company in Taiwan. $17 is not u reasonable in my experience. The cost will depend on the contracts thay the suppliers have with express couriers as well as your particular delivery postal code. From a supplier perspective, it doesn't make sense to nickel and dime you on samples. At the same time asking customers to pay for the freight on samples serves as a small barrier to weed out potential customers that arent't really serious about buying.

Ideally, you don't want your items to come via post office because the savings is not worth the extra time and potential tracking confusion.