Open Letter to Ye Gear Sellers

The nice thing with USPS is that they are USA taxpayer funded, so they can afford to charge artificially low rates and lose money every year and still stay in business. It's tough to compete with that.

Canada Post on the other hand taxes pride in turning a profit every year by using it's monopoly to overcharge Canadians.

"USPS sucks but you can't beat their international rates, just pray they don't loose one of your packages."

I would hope you would ship with insurance.

""USPS sucks but you can't beat their international rates, just pray they don't loose one of your packages."

I would hope you would ship with insurance."

They don't offer that option in most international shipping.

I am only looking at it from a Canadian perspective. Do they offer insurance to Canada?

Lawson wrote, "USPS sucks but you can't beat their international rates, just pray they don't lose one of your packages."

Blanket posts about something being "great" or something "sucks" aren't terribly helpful without a bit of elaboraton. Lawson, what was your experience with the USPS that led to your conclusion above?

My own experience — all the packages that I've sent and received internationally — covering Asia, Australia, Europe and Canada — over the last 35 years — I've only ever lost one package! That was a set of 1984 Olympics silver coins — probably too much of a temptation for some postal worker? THAT was also the one and only time I've ever purchased insurance, so it came in real handy.

No guarantee or anything, but I think sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly is always helpful.

I'm also hoping that sellers who have been hesitant about shipping overseas will see that the process is not perfect but not difficult, painful or unpredictable either. Why refuse business? Besides, enabling hikers around the world to enjoy your gear is a very good thing!

Looks like it, for priority mail.

http://www.usps.com/international/intlspecialservices.htm#H3

"I am only looking at it from a Canadian perspective. Do they offer insurance to Canada?"

Yes — with a $675 indemnity limit.

David Olsen wrote, “They don’t offer that option in most international shipping.”

That’s incorrect. You can buy optional insurance for packages to most international destinations! Click here for an index of countries and territories. I haphazardly clicked about a dozen of these — and insurance is offered for all but one — Iran. But Iran is likely a special case, due to various trade and funds restrictions.

I've shipped quite a few old recurve bows via USPS to Europe and Australia. Never had a problem, although there's a trick to getting bows to Australia due to their length limits.

Montbell isn't made in North America (it's Japan right?), so you have to pay duty on top of taxes when it crosses the border.

At least thats my understanding and why I haven't bought any of their gear.

MontBell stuff are made in China. Same as those "American" brands like The North Face or Mountain Hardwear…

I've shipped backpacks (American brand but made in Vietnam, China, etc.) and other stuff to Canada and don't ever recall anyone being levied taxes or customs duties. Similar to Canadians returning home from trips abroad, goods under a certain dollar value are not assessed. Also, my experience is that Customs don't usually assess taxes/duties on "onesie or twosie" type packages. Not an expert in Canadian law by any means, of course.

"That's incorrect. You can buy optional insurance for packages to most international destinations! Click here for an index of countries and territories. I haphazardly clicked about a dozen of these — and insurance is offered for all but one — Iran. But Iran is likely a special case, due to various trade and funds restrictions."

That's a good link! The local post office wasn't able to
find insurance when I have shipped to Germany, Qatar
or Great Briton. They were pretty confused about the customs
forms too for that matter.

Every reason I can think of but like all companies I do use them for all my international shipping since they have cheaper rates then both UPS or FedEx.

"Montbell isn't made in North America (it's Japan right?), so you have to pay duty on top of taxes when it crosses the border.

At least thats my understanding and why I haven't bought any of their gear."

I don't think this is correct. The vast majority of stuff sold by USA vendors isn't made in the USA and pretty much everything is only subject to the regular taxes (7-14% depending on your province) and handling fees ($5 USPS, $40 & up for couriers). I've bought from Montbell and paid only the regular taxes or no taxes because here in BC they don't seem to both charging tax on most parcels under $150 or so. There are a ton of exceptions to this of course as higher duties exist on a seemingly random list of products but 95% of stuff is just subject to the normal taxes. One exception is tents manufactured outside the USA. There is an additional 30% duty on those but in all my years of buying tents I've only been stung for this once. If you want to read more about all the items that are subject to additional tax you can do some searching on gov't websites but its quite confusing and there is so many random items on there that you'll never remember them all.

@ David Olsen:

Some employees are more experienced / better trained than others. Shipping a package to Uzbekistan one time, the postal clerk insisted I had made an error as "there's no such country"! Sigh…

I've had fairly good luck with USPS in modern times, although admittedly they were horrific in the 90's.

That being said, the worst experience I've ever had was with UPS, and I've sworn them off forever.

I had a $90,000 router arrive a month late, with a destroyed box barely hanging together, and literally truck tire tracks imprinted on half of the box. Which I'm assuming is what caused the irreparable chassis twist. As a testament to the quality of turn of the century (haha) Cisco equipment, the router while permanently mangled, functioned flawlessly, and probably does still to this day.

When I tried to claim insurance, UPS treated me like a con man, and implied that since the package arrived, and that I signed for it, and the item was in the box, I had no grounds.

I'll stick with USPS.

That sucks!