[Leica] Shipping to Canada (from USA)

[BrutuS <brutus@mda.ca>]

>>From: "Gordon Brown" <gordon.r.brown@worldnet.att.net>
>> > Do any Canadian LUG members have any experiences, comments, suggestions,
>> > cautions, warnings, etc., about shipping merchandise to Canada?
>> > I have a Canadian who wants to buy equipment from me, but has never been
>> > through the shipping and customs hoops before.

If the merchandise is photographic equipment (cameras, lenses, meters,
parts etc.) then
it is duty free, but subject to GST (7%) and possibly PST (depends on
province), which will
be charged to the recipient by the post office or courier. There is a fee
for this service. With
the post office it is $5 for regular surface or air mail, and $6+tax for
express (Global Priority,
aka EMS). Fedex and UPS Express services both include the fee. Regular UPS
does not,
and their tiered brokerage and disbursment fees are excessive, so as
recommended in
another posting, do not use regular UPS.

I have found USPS air mail "Letter" or "Parcel Post" services to be most
cost effective. You can
use the cheaper letter service if the package is small enough. You can not
insure letter
service (as you can with Parcel Post), but you can add some security by
adding the
extra cost registration service. If you are insuring or registering, it is
worth pricing the
faster Global Priority (EMS) service as it may work out to about the same
cost. All of
these services require the shipper to bring the package suitably wrapped to
the post office.
Apparently they can reject something wrapped entirely in plastic or slick
tape, and it has
been claimed that some post office outlets will not process international
shipments.
http://ircalc.usps.gov/ provides details and fairly accurate postage estimates.

As posted already, the package is to be labeled (USPS provides the label)
with a statement
of content and value (of goods, excluding shipping) and this will be used
to determine the taxes.
If the value is low (under $20) the post office sometimes does not collect
any tax, and
sometimes packages of higher value get through untaxed as well. Note that
once a
Global Priority package gets to Canada, it s processed by Purolator instead
of the regular PO.

Some sellers for whatever reason are reluctant or unwilling to use USPS.
For these cases
Fedex or UPS Express are options. Some shippers have accounts with the
courier allowing
a discounted rate (possibly still higher than USPS). A final option is for
the receiver to open
a Fedex account and arrange for the item to be picked up and delivered.
Having a Fedex
account may ina any case reduce the recipients cost (the rules were changed
last year -
there may now be a disbursement charge for those without an account).




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