Folks,
I made the mistake of not making sure that the last few items I bought on here were shipped by the USPS (United States Postal Service) DO NOT use UPS (United Parcel Service) to ship items to Canada. Because of my mistake, I was just charged an additional $125 for brokerage fees, that would never have been applied had I used USPS.
As a result of th total cost that I have now paid, I could have gone to Aircraftspruce down the road and bought these items brand new and in the box unopened.
So, learn from my mistake and go only with USPS when shipping to the cold north! Not only is it cheaper, it's faster!!!
Cheers,
Don
I'm not the shipping expert in our company but we ship a lot to Canada and I know this is a big issue for those folks.
USPS (US Postal Service) does not deliver to Canadian customers. They deliver packages to the border, and the Canadian mail service takes over from there. We have found their service to be very spotty depending where in Canada it?s going, and our customers tell us the same thing. Some are adamant that we NOT ship USPS because the Canadian mail service to their location is unreliable.
If the package is high value (ours average $500 and can be $thousands) traceability is important. There is no USPS service available to Canada that has package tracking/traceability once it crosses the border. Some Canadian customers want it shipped USPS to avoid the customs broker fee. After a week they are calling us asking for the status, and we have no way to determine that because it?s not traceable. Then if it doesn?t show up after a couple weeks the customer expects us to replace it at no charge. A few times we did that, then the original order showed up 4 or 6 weeks later, and the customer was honest enough to return it. If he wasn't honest and kept it, he would have gotten a two for one deal and we would never know what happened, we would have just eaten the loss. It?s also possible a dishonest character could game the system and report it missing even though he received it, and since we can?t trace it we can?t prove he got it so we have to send another or give a refund. I don?t know that this has ever happened, but it would be possible without package tracking ability.
So we like to ship by some method that's traceable, all the way to the destination. UPS is always traceable. UPS Ground to Canada is cheap, but they add the customs broker fee, normally about $50. The Canadian government also charges an import duty and VAT tax which UPS collects at delivery, but that is not UPS? fault. If people are being charged $125 or whatever, I suspect only $50 of that is the UPS broker fee and the rest is to fund your government. UPS Expedited and Express service are more expensive but they INCLUDE the brokerage fee so they end up netting about the same cost as UPS Ground, and they are faster (2-3 days). Typically the cost is $60-90 which, again, includes the brokerage fee. That?s how we ship most of our Canadian orders. I realize $60-90 is hard to justify for small dollar value shipments, but on the other hand traceability is not as important on small value packages so USPS is a more acceptable option for those.
I agree with some of the posts talking about surprise charges. That shouldn't happen. The shipper should explain the options to the customer, including all the costs. An order should not be shipped to a customer by a method other than the one he specified, unless he has agreed to the change.
It is not uncommon for Canadian customers to have us ship UPS to a location in the US near the border, so they can drive over and pick it up. There are even retail stores that provide this service and accept and hold these packages for a small fee. Shipping to a US hotel so an airline pilot friend can pick it up is also something we do a lot, especially for European customers.
The shipping cost per unit is less on large orders. Aeroteknic in Canada usually stocks a few of our systems. A Canadian customer could probably save some shipping cost buying from them.
Sometimes the foreign customer?s efforts to economize are a little extreme. We are sometimes asked to do things like understating the value on the customs form or creating a dummy invoice, to save the receiver some of the duties and VAT tax. We don?t think falsifying Federal customs documents is a good idea so we decline those requests even if it costs us the order. Just last week a customer in Ukraine canceled a large order because we declined to falsify the records, and to ship it via untraceable USPS.
Some Canadian customers have told us FedEx does not charge a customs broker fee, which contradicts several of the posts above. Based on these customer requests we tried FedEx for a couple months about 2 yrs ago and it was a nightmare. They did not invoice us the rates they quoted. We paid for daily pick up service, but the driver only came if it was convenient for him? about once a week he simply didn?t come because we were too far out of his way. Since we have Next Day and 2nd Day Air shipments every day, that?s a big problem. And their delivery guarantee was more like a delivery estimate. The last straw was a customer, a shop, ordered a preheat system on Friday and needed it the next morning. He paid two A&P?s overtime to come in and wait for the system so they could install it and their customer could leave on a trip. They paid a lot of money for Overnight Early AM service, and extra for Saturday delivery. It never showed up, and our customer was furious. We fired FedEx and don?t use them anymore.
The bottom line is I wanted the guys who are criticizing UPS to see another perspective. We have found them to be the most reliable option out there. Maybe not always the cheapest but they pick up here every day, very rarely fail to make the delivery date guarantee, and when they don?t it?s easy to track it. Personally, I think the days of our government run shipping service are numbered; it?s being replaced by the internet and the private package delivery companies.
