Regarding Photog, you were mistaken. He was always going to ship separately from the rest of the sub. When the combined shipping announcement was made, it was also noted that the initial figure in each sub could not be combined if purchased separately and would be a separate charge.

Have you tried PMing EvilSkeletor on the Mattel forums? He's a Mattel employee acting as a go-between for customer service and might be helpful in escalating your issues.

If he purchased the subs in separate transactions, you are correct. If he purchased them in the same transaction, he is correct. Directly from the Matty site when the subs were being sold:

"All subscriptions ordered by one person (same email address, credit card, address and shipping method) will ship together when purchased in the same transaction. Subscriptions not purchased together will still ship together, with one exception: The first month that any of your subscription orders ship, subscriptions not purchased together will not ship together (estimated January for Club Eternia® and MOTU 30th Anniversary Series, February for Club Lion Force and April for DC Universe Club Infinite Earths). The second time your subscription ships (essentially the monthly renewal), all of your subscriptions will ship together to the same address (estimated February for Club Eternia, March for MOTU 30th Anniversary Series, April for Club Lion Force and May for DC Universe Club Infinite Earths). Say, for example, you purchased two Club Eternia subscriptions in one transaction during the July on-sale period and two subscriptions during the September on-sale period in another transaction. When the first club figures are released in January, the figures purchased in July will ship in one package and the figures purchased in September will ship in another package. Then in February, all the figures from all four subscriptions will ship together. This only applies to subscriptions that were not purchased in the same transaction. All subscriptions that are purchased in the same transaction will ship together the first month.[/b]"

http://www.mattycollector.com/store/matty/en_US/pd/productID.233184100

In writing on the site when the subs were sold. Matty changed the rules well after the fact, saying the delay in combining shipping applied to all subs, regardless of whether they were purchased together.

So we were, indeed, originally guaranteed that the anniversary sub's first figure would ship with the the other subs if all were bought in the same purchase. Then Matty changed their minds, and is trying to re-write history to justify it.

I am aware of that conditional and had indicated it in my response. Given that the 30th Anniversary sub was created after the initial sub period was closed, I think the majority of subscribers purchased the 30th sub separately. Since the OP was referring to combined subs rather than subs purchased together, I felt safe in assuming he was fell under that case.

Not meaning to pick nits, but your nod to the separate purchases was separate from and after a blanket statement that Photog was "always going to ship separately." It was your first statement that was misleading and that I "corrected," as we don't know for a fact when he purchased the subs.

Miscommunication, the bane of the internet.