Ordering goods from US to Canada (Alberta)

wedivebc

And I don't deal with any company who only ship UPS.

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Cheers,

Dave....

Man is the only animal burdened with the knowledge he will eventually die

Amarok

Depends how fast you need the stuff. My experience with UPS Ground is that its a PITA + extra duties. USPS has taken up to three weeks! EMS not that much better. Have had no problems so far in getting stuff from Jakub (Golem) on a regular basis by UPS expedited ( 3 days average plus tracking plus you can prepay duties once its logged through Calgary). Been lucky so far ref duties - dive equipment ( non restricted) so only GST -6%.
Downside could be if you are not a "regular" shipper and dont have a courier profile then you could face delays in getting goods examined by Customs which can be a chore and takes time.
If you need any help drop us a pm.
Where in Alberta??
KB

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bgpartri

I have no recommendation, but use all of the services in and out of Canada regularly, so maybe I can help explain them a bit. I will assume that the reader has no information, so this will seem a bit basic to people who regularly ship across borders. No insult is intended.

Transportation services and charges:
There are two basic types of service within North America - ground and air. (Outside of NA, it is air and sea.)

In addition, the other key features are delivery confirmation, tracking, tracing, and insurance.

Delivery confirmation just means that you can prove it was delivered. Tracking is the ability to follow the progress of your shipment. Tracing is the ability to find out what happened to it. There are subtle mixtures of these services.

Insurance may or may not be available, or may have valuation limits.

Postal transport will typically offer delivery confirmation and insurance. They will say they offer tracking, but typically what they mean by tracking is that they have a website where you can determine whether is has been delivered. It will have little or no progress information.

They will offer tracing, but typically they won't initiate a trace for 30 days.

They usually have an insurance limit of around $1,000.

The courier services tend to offer real-time tracking and tracing. They usually will insure for whatever value you want. But it gets very expensive as the value goes up.

Border Services:
Although there is only one basic service called "Customs Clearing," it generates several different potential charges.

In general, postal services will only clear merchandise up to a maximum value like $1,000, but they only charge a nominal fee.

High speed couriers will start clearing your package before it leaves the country. While the package is in transit, it will clear and when it hits their Canadian warehouse, it will already be cleared. As of today, anything over $1,600 will be classified as a "High Value" shipment and will incur additional scrutiny.

- Sales taxes are collected by the courier. These vary based on whether the province has harmonized PST and GST (VAT). This is in the range of 5-16% of the value of the shipment.

- Duty is international restraint of trade. Countries use these charges to artificially support their industries. Although most scuba gear doesn't attract duty, some does. For example, Canada has a substantial drysuit and wetsuit industry, so there are duties on neoprene products.

- The customs clearing charge it self, usually around $40. This charge is for checking the paperwork, assigning a Harmonized code, filling out Canadian Border Services forms and submitting them. Customs clearing is included in UPS Expedited, Express, and other high speed air services and in FedEx air. For UPS Ground it isn't included. This is a big area for POV for Canadians. You order something from the US and it includes shipping. Then UPS wants $40 as well as the taxes and duty. The US vendor doesn't have this problem with shipments to the US so typically doesn't worry about it much. This is probably the biggest public relations problem UPS has in Canada. I used to hate them until I really understood what was going on.

There are other subtle games that they all play with you, but because they all do it, it's more a matter of which evil empire you want to deal with.

So if you need if fast or need to insure is for more than $1000, you should use a courier.

UPS Ground may seem to be a lot cheaper, but by the time they collect the customs clearing charge at the other end, it's not much of a savings. But if you're shipping a 100 pound reel of cable, by all means use ground. Air could over $500 for shipping.

If you aren't in any hurry and aren't too worried about the value, you can use postal services. It will typically be about half the cost.

There are lots of special cases and wrinkles between various countries, but I hope that helps with the basics.

Bruce

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Hyper-limits

Agree with you on that one Dave, anybody shipping with UPS doesn't get my business.

Cheers

Al

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wedivebc

Yes if it is their only option

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Cheers,

Dave....

Man is the only animal burdened with the knowledge he will eventually die

Moray Brown

This is great - Thanks.....