Customs Problem

[baseball tourist]

Originally Posted by 19cbb

Don't want to hijack the thread, but wanted to ask others about shipping charges from Canada.

I've been asked to pay $15 Can$ to ship two cards.

This is the message I received from the seller:



Any opinions?

-Jimmy

Canada Post is quite expensive and their rates have caused me some issues with Ebay buyer and in fact with Ebay itself recently.

I mainly sell jerseys and not light packaged items such as cards, and I ask for a $15 US flat fee to cover US buyers (shipped from my home in Vancouver, BC) "Expedited" postage fees. With the fluctuating exchange rate of the day, this typically gets me within a dollar of the actual cost, but most often it is short and I eat the difference.

Why don't I charge more...because many of my US customers are used to paying less than half of that rate to have similar items shipped across the nation. If i charge more, I lose customers who assume that I am taking advantage. In fact, Ebay sent me emails suggesting that I consider lowering my rates to remain competitive, yet I am actually losing money with my rates. If I revert to non-expeditied service the packages are sent via 'Ground' service and take far too long to arrive (considering Customs delays etc.) for most buyers to handle. Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

Back to your question...I don't know of any Canada Post service option that offers any less than a minimum of $100 CAD insurance included for the price, but as I deal in small packages mostly, i could be wrong.

Here is a link to the canadapost.ca site's info page for determining "Xpresspost" rates to the US. You can plug the weight, size etc using metric measurements) and your senders postal code and your zip, and see if a fair rate was quoted.

http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/busi...tusa.jsf#Rates

chris