Online Gear Canada

There aren't too many. I got some Platy Bottles out of a place in Banff but that's about it.

What bothers me is that most USA online stores offer free shipping within the USA, but if you live outside the USA you pay full shipping. Why not just charge people outside the USA the extra? If something costs them $10 to ship within the USA and $15 to Canada, they should just charge me the extra $5 to keep things fair.

Normally I order stuff from the USA because the better deals usually offset the additional shipping costs and duty. Just make sure it comes via USPS and not a courier or you'll be on the hook for a lot more 'brokerage fees'.

Thanks for the advice, did you get those platy bottles from Monod Sports? They have a few icebreaker shirts on sale right now. Do you ever get nailed with duty fees?

Nevermind, read your post again and yes you get nailed with duty, I guess a more appropriate question would be how much is duty usually?

" Just make sure it comes via USPS and not a courier or you'll be on the hook for a lot more 'brokerage fees'."

Ain't that the truth the world over!

I just sent a buddy some gear to Australia (well I will actually drop it off tomorrow). The package USPS was $25.00 US. The cheapest quote from United Parcel Service was $101.00

Guess what I did?

The largest gear shop I know of in Canada is MEC. But shipping and duty was a problem. I did almost drive up there from MN back when the US dollar was at a good rate for a killer bag deal.

Dan – What you may or may not know is that most US retailers ship UPS or Fedex not USPS due to amazing bulk discounts given by these couriers. So many times 'Free Shipping' is often only costing the retailer $2 – $6 vs what companies such as REI or Sierra Trading Post charge for Price based shipping and handling. I will promise you that if I, being in the US, called up most 'free shipping' retailers who use UPS or FedEx at deep discounts and asked them to ship USPS they would either decline or charge me the full amount.

Say you and I both ordered a $300 sleeping bag from Company X that offers free shipping. They can ship to me in the US with their dedicated carrier insured for approx. $7 – $10 depending on their distance from me. Take that same $300 bag purchased by you in Canada and ship it out USPS. To cover themselves they must ship Priority Internantional so it can be insured for the $300 MSRP and suddenly it costs $28.95 (per USPS postage price calculator). First class international is not an option due to lack of insurability.

Not trying to start a fire here – just stating it in the interest of fairness.

Yes the PlatyBottles were from Monod in Banff.

The duty charges for most stuff coming in to Canada is the same as the same tax you pay locally. So here in BC, I pay 12% duty because the taxes in BC are 5% GST and 7% PST.

There are certain goods that are charged at higher rates besides alcohol and tobacco. Unfortunately, this is quite random. For example, synthetic tents not made in the USA are charged at 30%. I learned this one the hard way. USA made tents are charged normally, but the duty guys will probably assume it's foreign made since virtually all of them are, so you'll probably get charged 30% and then have to complain to get your money back.

If you start reading the lists of items that additional duty is charged on, you'll quickly realize it's totally random because it's done by bureaucrats who are usually responding to some trade embargo that some foreign country did. The 'synthetic tents' is the only one I've ever run into that affected me. The list of items is so random and long that it's pretty much pointless to check with it every time you buy something. One good lesson though is to ask shippers to keep things as vague as possible on the customs declaration slip. For example, had the shipper wrote 'camping gear' on my 'synthetic tent' parcel instead of writing 'MSR Carbon Reflex 2 camping tent' then I probably would have saved about $100.

Another good thing is to make sure the shipper writes the value of the item as what you paid, not the retail value. Some people think they are doing you a favor by writing the value as the MSRP (because they can insure it for more) but this just costs you a lot more tax if you got it for a good deal. The correct and legit way to do it, is to put the value as the price you paid.

In addition to the duty, USPS charges a handling fee of $5. This is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

Couriers on the other hand charge all sorts of 'brokerage fees' and they start at about $30 and go up as the value of the package does. A general rule of thumb, is that brokerage fees will be about $25 plus the duty all over again. So a $1000 parcel would pay $120 duty plus about $145 in 'brokerage fees' for a total bill around $265. It varies a lot, but it's usually quite severe.

Duty does not apply to parcels worth under $20 Cdn, nor does it apply to parcels worth under $60 Cdn if they are marked as a 'gift'.

When I lived in Ontario, the duty guys were always on the ball and if a parcel was worth $20.01 then I would have to pay. For the last year I've lived in BC and the duty guys here are much more slack. Only rarely do I get charged duty on a parcel worth under $150. Over that, they pretty much get you every time. This experience is with USPS. With couriers I believe they always get you if you're supposed to pay duty because they don't miss a chance to charge more fees. I never use couriers though after getting burned a few times.

I once got a bicycle frame shipped that was worth $869 USD which was about $1000 Cdn at the time. The total duty bill from FedEx was $279. The duty was about $120 and then I had to pay about $140 in brokerage/handling fees and then I had to pay tax on those fees! Which was another $20 or so. It blows my mind that they think they can pay $120 on your behalf at the border and then turn around and charge you over double that just a couple days later. That's worse than loan sharking.

"Dan – What you may or may not know is that most US retailers ship UPS or Fedex not USPS due to amazing bulk discounts given by these couriers."

Fair enough….that's good to know. I would still like to get the $5 discount or whatever the courier charges them though but I guess it is more hassle for them which is why they don't. With the number of parcels I've gotten in the last year I bet I would have another $100-$200 if I got a $5 shipping discount on each.

We ship a lot to Canada, The UK and other countries (particularly Australia and New Zealand). One issue is that with postage they are the only orders that I have to buy in person for. That means when we ship no pickup by the carrier, I have to go stand in line with the unwashed masses.

At my last job I was in charge of all International orders and we only shipped one day a week due to the amount of work involved. Traditional US shipping is easy, you just weigh and generate a label.

USPS gives discounts for buying postage online but not for outside of the US. As well, getting insurance and tracking is near nil for out of US. So there is more burden on the retailer if it goes missing (for example while it takes on average for a package to go from west coast US to Engalnd in 5 to 7 days, I currently have a customer who has waited 3 weeks. It happens. If it doesn't show in a week I will eat the entire order and reship a new one, paying again for the postage.)

It isn't cheap to ship out of the US. Canada isn't so bad overall, but everywhere else is bad. I can say that to ship a book to Oz we spend around $8 to 10. In the US it is $2.50. Canada is $4 to 5.

Big companies have often one employee who handles all International orders, it eats up a lot of time (like it did for the Thai importer I worked for.)

"If it doesn't show in a week I will eat the entire order and reship a new one, paying again for the postage.)"

Sarah, for what it's worth, my opinion on this is that, as a buyer, I usually have the option of paying extra to have the parcel insured and tracked. If I choose the cheaper uninsured option, then the parcel ships at my risk, not yours! So far I haven't had any no-shows with standard USPS airmail…touch wood.

Now what really hacks me off is when my well-intentioned family sends me some nice Christmas surprise, and they send it fully insured with someone like UPS or Fedex. To even find out what's in the parcel I have to wait several weeks while customs gets their cut (so I have to pay tax and duty for my present), and THEN I have to drive out to the airport to pick it up because they always try to deliver it when I'm not home, and they won't leave it without a signature. What a PITA!

Here are a few online Canadian gear stores:

http://www.shop.vpo.ca/

http://www.altitude-sports.com/

https://www.ecooutdoorsports.com/shopmain.php

http://www.monodsports.com/main.php?