Shipping to Canada
I see Dave Shea has been explaining why he doesn’t typically order goods online; I’ve ordered lots of goods online and had mixed experiences. I usually only buy online if 1) I can’t find what I’m looking for locally, or 2) it’s substantially cheaper than buying locally. I also make sure of warranty implications for anything I buy that might need one (e.g., my Tungsten).
I tend to give the nod to Canadian retailers because of the hassles Dave talks about and also because I like to support local or semi-local small businesses (although I have bought enough at Amazon that the regular “you might be interested in” emails give a remarkably consonant view into my current interests). I buy books at Amazon.com if I’m not in a hurry to get them and if they’re cheaper, including shipping, than buying the same books locally. This is often the case right now since books have the price printed on the back, and the Canadian dollar is currently worth quite a lot more compared to the US dollar than when lots of the books were printed.
Although I haven’t had anything shipped by them for some time, I agree with Derek Miller, who advises avoiding UPS if at all possible; I’ve found UPS in the past to be very quick to charge double fees if two boxes in the same shipment are labelled with the total (they charge as if each box had the total value). What I do to try to get around that problem is to either call or email the place I’m ordering from if I think there’s a chance they might put things into more than one box, and discuss the issue with them. The result is that I haven’t had that particular problem for a few years now. Companies that don’t answer the phone or email don’t get my custom.
Recent experiences that I’ve had with ordering from outside Canada:
- books from a couple of small retailers in the US coming via Canada Post: no extra charges
- two baby slings hand-made by a small retailer in the US coming via Canada Post: no extra charges
- quite a few books from Amazon.de coming through Canada Post: charged GST and associated other fees about half the time
- books from Amazon.com coming via Canada Post: occasionally charged GST etc. If you request priority shipping, Amazon collects an Import Fees Deposit to cover the various charges (I guess to save time in delivery)
- buying a humidifier from Venta Airwasher: this is a longer story. I called up to order rather than using the website, to discuss the delivery issues. They charged me GST and when I said I found that odd since they’re a US store, they assured me everything would be fine. And to call back and let them know if it wasn’t. Sure enough, the humidifier (great humidifier, BTW) showed up with no extra charges and I was pleasantly surprised. Until the bill from Fedex arrived in the mail a week later. I called the company, complained, they said they’d take care of it, I called Fedex to tell them what was happening, didn’t pay the bill, and haven’t heard anything in the year since, so I assume Venta did take care of it.
In the unexpected-but-in-the-end-ok category: I ordered a DVD from BBC Canada, and was charged the normal GST etc. The problem here was that they shipped the DVD from the US, and Canada Post promptly charged me $12 for GST, duties, etc., despite the envelope having a “GST paid” stamp on it. I called BBC Canada to complain and they credited my credit card with the $12. I hope they got the money back from Revenue Canada; at least I didn’t have to pay.
Why is it that Amazon.com will not ship any other products other than books….Their prices are much cheaper even with the shippping added
I don’t know why Amazon has so many limits on what can be sent to Canada. Maybe some manufacturers won’t let them, so they can try to get more money out of us? Just a thought.
Hey there - great info!
I stumbled across your website because I found a DVD set I want that’s $300 at Amazon.ca and $150 at Amazon.com.
I have no clue how customs deals with stuff from Amazon.com but it certainly seems like it’s worth doing.
It looks like you’ve only had your stuff from them checked about 1/2 the time - I’ve also heard warnings about UPS. Does Amazon.com ever use them?
Overall has it been worth your while to use .com instead of.ca?
thanks again,
Davi
I believe Amazon always uses USPS/Canada Post, but I don’t use the express service so I don’t know what they use for that. Canada Post charges a $5 handling fee if they do charge you the GST and duties. So if you add up the extra shipping charge and the handling fee (bearing in mind that Amazon.ca will charge you the GST anyway), then you can see if it’s worth it even if you do pay the duties. If the stuff comes from the US then it should be covered under NAFTA, thus the duties will be minimal, in which case it’s probably worth getting the set from Amazon.com rather than Amazon.ca. It’s probably also worth checking other options though, just in case, such as Future Shop, or Chapters/Indigo, in case they’re cheaper again. Overall I typically use Amazon.com, but that’s also because they have a different selection to Amazon.ca and often the books I want are 24-hour order from .com but 4-6 weeks from .ca (no idea why). HTH.
I’m in the same position as David — Amazon.com has some exceptionally good DVD deals right now, and nothing in Canada comes close to matching. I came across this post while searching for information on what shipping methods Amazon.com ACTUALLY uses and whether or not I’ll get hit with a ridiculous brokerage fee. Remarkably, this post was just about all I found; people haven’t talked about it much, which I suppose is a good sign.
I heard recently (from a Canadian friend who happens to now work at Amazon.com in Seattle on their software) that the reason Amazon.ca is so separate from .com is because bookstores are a protected business in Canada. Here’s the (first google hit giving) details: In a cultural-protection effort, the federal government placed (in 1985) fairly strong limitations on the allowable level of foreign investment in bookstores operating in Canada.
This forces Amazon.ca to operate as something of a franchisee of .com, rather than a majority-owned subsidiary as you might expect. That’s why it’s appearance and features seem to lag a bit behind other Amazons, and why you have to create a separate user account for .ca, while the same account automatically works at both .com, .co.uk, and (probably) most others.
Still, this doesn’t quite explain why Amazon.com is not willing/able to ship things like toys and household goods to Canada, or why .ca has not expanded into those areas, either. It probably has something to do with the customs hassle and shipping costs making it not worthwhile.
thats strange that the prices would be significantly different for .ca and .com amazon sites given that they are the same company. A similar trend exist in europe where you will pay about 400 pounds for video games that cost $400 in the USA… evn though their currency is a lot stronger than ours