I'll agree with you on customs. Chicago appears to be a black hole. My stuff comes through San Francisco and I've tracked it go through in just a few hours. I never found the shipping fees to be outrageous. $15 for stealth shipping on a $1200 order with seeds that all came in original breeder packaging. The payment options were much better as you could use credit card, amazon gift card, bitcoin, etc... Most of the US places that carried anything I wanted required cash or money order. Which brings up another issue. I don't want anything from most US breeders.
As for shipping to Europe and back being wasteful, I don't see it that way. They are selling to people from all over the world and having a seedbank superstore that ships worldwide provides access to those genetics for many. I also purchased a minimal amount of offerings from US breeders with the majority coming from breeders from other countries.
Not trying to argue and you made some valid points instead of the standard "European breeders suck" argument many always toss out despite the fact that they have never even grown anything from Europe and are not qualified to comment on the genetics.