Man I should totally come to LE more ...
I sell boro color at retail every day...
$5/rod is not actually a bad deal usually, especially if you're allowed to pick the rod you want, single rods, no minimums, and get the service that comes with small local retail.
At $60/lb avg. ($3.75/oz) for boro color (excepting cobalt, most boro lists at $55-70 a pound) and an avg rod weights around 1.5 oz that comes to about $5.63 a rod.
That said, boro color (and most raw glass materials) is sold by the manufacturers by weight, not volume or dimension, so if a retailer decides to change the quantity metric from weight to piece they could be setting themselves up for problems. To the buyer it means they're not paying a consistent price for a material. One day you might get a 2oz fat rod of one color for $5 then the next day get literally half the glass for the same price. Caveat Emptor.
I sell mix-and-match GA and NS color for $3.75 an ounce, $55/lb, and do all kinds of seemingly (but not actually) arbitrary discounts...
So yeah, $5/rod may or may not actually work out better in your favor, but over the long run it should tun up pretty close to a normal price.
Also, the only thing I would compare to Amazon Bronze in the Northstar pallet would be Red Exotic. Maybe Aurora, but generally speaking the GA Amazon colors are similar to the NS Exotics.