I recieved a call from John Groff at Kent yesterday and got the same request for a 1lb sample from each pail. He said that for their US customers they were prepaying the shipping through UPS, but that was not possible with international shippments. He said he "would look after me later", but did not provide any detail on that. I sent the two one pound samples off yesterday with UPS; total shipping cost was $21.54 for standard service plus a $1.80 for a packing box from Staples (great timing to have just taken all my cardboard boxes to recycling
). I did check Canada post for shipping rates too. It would have been approximatly $12 to send it with them, but the delivery time would have been longer.
To be fair to Kent, John seemed genuinly concerned about this issue and was very quick at responding to my e-mail. He phoned me while I happened to be out, I called back and left a voicemail for him and he called again within 20 minutes. For a big company that is a very good response to a customers problem. I won't make any judgment on Kent until I get the final resolution on this, so far I am satisfied with the way they are dealing with it.
As for why they need a full pound of salt to test, I can only make assumptions. Probably they want to ensure that it is a large enough sample to allow for multiple tests. Also a very small sample may not accuratly represent the chemical mix in the salt.