I recently had a weird experience with an eBay seller who asked me to pay $11.50 to ship me a single downtube shifter for which I had paid $7. I asked him to send it USPS First Class International, which, generously estimating the package at half a pound, would have cost $2.73US (or $17 for Priority, which is not the method he was going to use). No amount of reasoning or haggling would settle it, and he seemed to be as baffled at my unwillingness to pay a 250% handling premium over actual shipping as I was at his unwillingness to budge. Finally I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and paid him, thinking it would at least be satisfying to leave negative feedback. But then he told me he was going out of town for a month and couldn't ship it, so he refunded my money. It was a very peculiar thing.
Adam Hammond Toronto, ON, Canada
On 25-Sep-08, at 3:19 PM, John Betmanis wrote:
> At 10:28 AM 25/09/2008 -0700, Brian Samson wrote:
>> That sounds very strange to me. I've received probably 200 parcels
>> from the US over the past 7 years and only one went missing - a small
>> item worth about $5. I've had no damage problems except in a couple
>> of cases where the item was poorly packed. I've also never heard
>> anyone say that shipping to Canada is a challenge, although you do
>> have to fill out the little customs form, same as shipping from
>> Canada
>> or anywhere else. I always request USPS, as UPS tack on an
>> unbelievable assortment of additional charges and don't provide good
>> service.
> <snip>
>> Brian Samson
>> Vancouver, BC, Canada
>>
>>
>> On 25-Sep-08, at 6:32 AM, wheelman@nac.net wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Shipping to Canada from the US has always been a challenge.
>>>
>>> Ray Homiski
>>> Elizabeth, NJ USA
>
> I've also never failed to receive items from the U.S. The only
> purchase
> that failed to arrive was from France. However, I didn't pursue it
> further
> after contacting the seller because it was only worth $16 and turned
> out I
> didn't really want it.
>
> But shipping to Canada apparently has to be a big PITA for a lot of
> people
> in the U.S., even though it only requires filling out a simple customs
> form. In industry I found that there were U.S. parts suppliers who
> just
> couldn't get that figured out and employed intermediary agents to do
> the
> paperwork and shipping. This is ironic, because most of our
> customers were
> in the U.S. and ended up eating the extra cost because we were the
> only
> game in town.
>
> Whenever I buy parts on-line from the U.S., shipping USPS is seldom an
> option. For some reason they use some high end method for that,
> costing a
> lot more, sometimes as much as $25 or $30, making it futile to buy a
> $10
> part. Even when they use USPS, the rate charged is at least double the
> actual postage, as if they employed unionized packers at $40 an hour
> who
> individually went out and purchased the materials.
>
> Even USPS isn't totally safe. Quite often Canada Post will collect
> local
> taxes and a $5 brokerage fee upon delivery.
>
> Maybe all these hurdles to receiving goods from the U.S. have a
> purpose.
> When the Canadian dollar was at par or better, some cars built in
> Canada
> were still priced up to 40% more here than in the U.S. Neither the
> politicians nor the manufacturers have an explanation. It's just pure
> greed. Same as the price of gasoline here. Even though Canada is the
> biggest oil supplier for the U.S., our gas costs a lot more than it
> does in
> the U.S. When Huricane Ike was approaching the Gulf Coast, our gas
> prices
> immediately shot up by 10%, long before they went up in the U.S. So
> long as
> cross-border commerce is hindered by tax collectors and profiteers, we
> Canadians will continue to pay through the nose and accept it.
>
> John Betmanis
> Woodstock, Ontario
> Canada