[Leica] Shipping into Canada was Who modifies gear (in the USA)?

["Robert G. Stevens" <robsteve@istar.ca>]

I live in Canada and ran into this grief regarding an Aerostich suit for my
motorcyling.  After three tries I finally had a suit that fit.  On two of
the tries, I was charged the Gst (HST, VAT) on the replacement suits.
There is a form you can get from Canada Customs that you fill out with a
copy of a bill of laden where you returned the item to the USA and they
will refund the taxes paid.

In regards to UPS, avoid them like the plague when shipping into Canada.
They charge a brokerage fee in the twenty to thirty dollar range whether
taxes are collected or not.  The Post office is better in this respect. 

The other thing to avoid when sending things to Canada is to ship to a
person's business address.  If the couriers think it is a commercial
transaction it gets complicated and they will usally call to ask who your
customs broker is.

With all these complications, the good old US Postal airmail is usally only
a day or so longer than a courier.  This is because Canada Post does the
customs clearing themselves, while overnight couriers can loose a day while
dealing with their brokerage division and Customs.

Regards,

Robert Stevens


At 02:41 PM 5/18/98 -0400, you wrote:
>I believe there is actually no duty charged on 35mm photographic goods
>crossing the US-Canada border -- only taxes. A simple way to reduce these
>to nil is to ship always by FedEx - I've found they have a superb record of
>getting things in and out without hassle. Sure, they cost a bit more. UPS,
>in my experience, always hits you with extra charges after the fact. The
>post office is somewhere in between these two.
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