need alittle info on buying from Canada......

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Posted By: hennessey

I haven't seen anyone bring this up on the board, but was wondering about your experience with buying cards from Canada. I bought a card from a board member earlier this year and it took almost a month to complete the trans-action. By the time I purchased an International money order, mailed it, and waited on the card. I just bought another card from a Candaian dealer on E-bay, paypaled them and I'm now waiting on the card. This was done on the 4th of march. Does this process really take this long buying from Canada. Any feed back with help calm my nerve's. thanks

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Posted By: Jodi Birkholm

I am Canadian, and have dealt with extended waiting periods in such cases. This seems to occur on both sides of the Canadian-American border when the mail has to cross into another country. Extra patience is required--I have had waiting periods of up to three and a half weeks at times, although this is unusual. A normal waiting period is roughly no less than 9 days, but no more than two weeks.

Another thing: Be aware of insured packages crossing borders and the customs fees that go along with them. There are customs fees that you have to pay the post office on internationally-mailed packages. I'm not sure what percentage of the declared value you will be charged. If you have a Canadian friend, I would advise sending expensive orders to them so as to save on these duty charges. They can then mail the package to you as you see fit.

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Posted By: fkw

2 of the last 3 packages I received from Canada were cut open by homeland security and then resealed with a green sticker. One was a $500 card, but nothing ended up missing.

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Posted By: hennessey

thanks jodi, he sell's alot of merchandise so he may go to the post office once a week so i guess I'll just keep checking my mailbox.

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Posted By: Grant Rainsley

I'm in Vancouver, and make regular visits to the P.O. to send stuff to the U.S. First off, Canada Post is slow....but, with new regs, according to the gal there, anything with an enclosure has to be marked accordingly....apparently Homeland Security et al are concerned about ink and the chemicals it may contain, among other things. So anything coming from Canada is likely to be even slower than normal. Just what I heard.......

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Posted By: Andrew

I ship to the US almost once a week, I only use eXpress Post from Canada Post. It costs about $15-20 but it gets the package there in 4-5 days or I get a refund....which I normally get 99% of the time because it takes 5-6 days normally to the far parts of the US but to New York and "close" to Toronto its about 3-4 days.

Andrew

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Posted By: Richard

Wait a second...If you send something to the US via ExpressPost and it doesn't arrive "in time", you get a refund? How does one go about claiming that? I wish I had known that months ago!

Richard.

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Posted By: Andrew

If the package is even 1 day late you just go to the website, file a late package claim and bam, they have the record to back it up since its tracked and they put the cheque in the mail to you. Normally it takes a couple days for the cheque but in the last month or so I've got half my money back and the card is only 1 day late which is still quick shipping to the US if you ask me and I have never had one opened by customs.

Andrew

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Posted By: brian

Andrew, I wish they had that here in the US. It must be great to get a refund back most of the time. Our International Express Mail would not be so forgiving. It is incredibly expensive, a hassle to fill out all the forms and not so precise regarding delivery timeframes. I had to pay $40 just to send a document to the Middle East and I think they allowed for 7 business days. Not sure if they would even issue a refund here unless the item was insured, and then you would have to go through a mile of forms and red tape.

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Posted By: DaveW

I bought a card from somebody in Canada on March 3 and it just arrived yesterday. I once bought a card
from somebody in Windsor Ontario and it took 6 weeks to make it to California. So just be patient.
- Dave

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Posted By: hennessey

thanks Dave, for the depressing news (LOL). if i didnt spend $400 on the card i probably wouldn't be so concerned.