Fellow Canadians: What’s the best way to ship products from US sites?
How’s it going guys, i’m hoping to find some advice on companies that handle shipping from american sites. I’m wanting to order Ableton Push from Guitar Center but they don’t ship that product to Canada. I was thinking about using one of those middle men shipping companies that will do shipping to Canada. Has anyone ever had any experience with these?
Depending where you live you could send it to a border mailbox.
hmm I briefly read about that, how does that work?
I live on the Michigan border. I get stuff shipped to the closest border crossing even if the company does ship to Canada. I usually get taxed hard when shipping directly to my house internationally.
Instead of putting your address in the shipping info, you put the address of the border crossing + c/o Rdej47. They charge me $5 to bring it over. Check the website of your closest border crossing.
Awesome man thanks for your help. I’m in Saskatchewan and it’s maybe an hour and a half drive to the border. I’d rather take the small drive then be surprised with the ridiculous surprise fee’s that you usually get.
second what fitzyp said. When I lived on the border with Michigan as well, we’d always do it that way. But make sure to do your research, for some reason I feel on the Canada/Michigan border they just didn’t care.
Side Note: We also used to buy our Kegs in Michigan for our keggers. saves TONS of money!!!
Is there ever any issues with duties or taxes? Since I would just be crossing the border to pick up a package wouldn’t I have to pay a lot of duties due to the dollar limit on what I can bring back in such a short amount of time?
You’re best off buying the item from Musicians Friend, which is a part of the Guitar Center company, sells all the same gear, and ships to Canada.
Then pay for a “pre-brokered” shipping service like UPS International Expedited. As long as you’re reasonably close to a city in SK, it’s often about $35-$50, has a 5-6 day delivery timeframe, and you wont get hit with those surprise UPS fees tacked on simply for moving a package into the hands of Canada Customs. Whatever you do, do not choose base shipping forms like UPS Ground or USPS First Class. Customs can delay those for weeks on end, and you’ll probably get the brokerage fee added on as an insult.
You’ll still have to pay GST/PST no matter what. You might as well just pay it from home. There’s a chance you could use the US mailbox company and still end up getting hit for duties when coming back into Canada.
10% Is all you pay but depends also on value sometimes nothing. Also the crossing you goto matters portal is more sticky then noonan or unger