Avoiding Brokerage Fees

[Willybgh]

I have just received a package from etrailer.com. It came by regular post to the Alliston Ontario area pretty quick. Just check the shipping method and select USPS.

Chris

[miatared]

UPS & al rip off Canadians for sure - US Postal Service/Canada Post works great - IF and only IF your vendor agrees to use them. UPS has incredibly good rates for the US only... they must have a gold plated building in Fort Erie, ON, with all the brokerage fees they've charged.

Other wise, I plan my purchases around my US camping trips and pick it up over there.

Finally, if you have a friend in the US, have it shipped there and then have that person send it to you by USPS, if that is possible. Not too often though, as you may not have that friend for long .

Good luck

[caper]

CW uses UPS only for the same reason the company I worked at used UPS, cost savings. We could ship an item across Canada for less money by using UPS over Canada Post. The book cost to ship by UPS would be $10.00 the cost to our company would be $2.25 and be delivered the next day. Because we only used UPS we recieved a volume discount. The only time we would use Canada Post was to ship an item that was not serviced by UPS.

[great white]

I will not buy from a US retailer if they only ship UPS.

Been burned once by UPS. It came out to more than the price of the item itself.

Went like this:

Item - 100 bucks
Shipping - 35 bucks
"Brokerage" - 75 bucks
COD charge to collect said "brokerage" - 10 bucks
Taxes and duties - around 20 bucks

Total cost for my "100 dollar" item - 230 bucks.

Fedex is no better.

That won't happen ever again...

[The_Stuff]

UPS also disregards any import exemptions. "Hobby" and "toy" parts are not to have any duty or tax bringing them into canada, yet still get that nice broker fee and GST on it.... Im tempted next time to refuse it.
.


one guy i know wrote them a cheque and then went and canceled the cheque. wonder how that turned out..