Why are Americans charging so much for shipping to Canada. Rates went up, but sellers are gouging.

[rachel_nevada]

I know your postage rates went up, but sellers are gouging worse than ever. One is charging  $33.25 for a 4" Flintstone figurine. I know rates went up, but not enough to warrant charges like this.

I just bought and received 3 Simpsons figures from Alabama, cost was $13.35. 

[marnotom!]

---

@rachel_nevada wrote:

I know your postage rates went up, but sellers are gouging worse than ever. One is charging  $33.25 for a 4" Flintstone figurine. I know rates went up, but not enough to warrant charges like this.

I just bought and received 3 Simpsons figures from Alabama, cost was $13.35. 

---

Two possibilities.

The first is that it's an eBay glitch.  I just did a search for Flintstones figurines and I found that the shipping rate in the search results was almost three times as high as the rate on the listings page.

The second is that the seller may be using eBay.com's Global Shipping Program to ship outside of the United States.  The buyer pays for the item, any taxes that may be owing on it and customs clearance charges in advance.  The seller then ships the item to a processing centre in Kentucky who then forwards it to the buyer via a variety of carriers which may not have anything to do with the postal service.

As a general rule of thumb, an item that can be shipped by First Class Mail International (U.S. equivalent of small packet air) is usually not a good candidate for shipping through the Global Shipping Program.  Some sellers are starting to figure this out for themselves but it can take a while as many of them don't know how to check the shipping rates the GSP displays and instead get complaining non-buyers instead.

[marnotom!]

Okay, third possibility is that the seller is shipping by Priority International (parcel post) when First Class Mail International would likely suffice.

Some U.S. sellers are so wedded to the idea of shipping domestically by Priority that they haven't done their homework to see how Priority looks to a non-U.S buyer.

[inuk_the_polar_bear]

To them all foriegners are thieves, so, they ship with tracking and every possible protection option. The cost goes up. Many also tack on fees for filling in the CN22. It takes a few seconds and their time is valuable. I am not making this up.

[marnotom!]

---

@inuk_the_polar_bear wrote:

To them all foreigners are thieves, so, they ship with tracking and every possible protection option. The cost goes up. Many also tack on fees for filling in the CN22. It takes a few seconds and their time is valuable. I am not making this up.

---

I spend too much time on the .com site's International Trading Discussion Board trying to convince sellers that some form of insurance (preferably of the "cookie jar" variety) is much more useful than tracking items up the wazoo and that CN 22s don't take five years to fill out, so this doesn't surprise me.

[rykkm]

I don't remember, as I haven't done any selling in awhile, but doesn't the Paypal shipping option also include a CN 22 or similar form for customs declaration?

[marnotom!]

---

@rykkm wrote:

I don't remember, as I haven't done any selling in awhile, but doesn't the Paypal shipping option also include a CN 22 or similar form for customs declaration?

---

Yes.  The CN22 would be for international letter post items (USPS's First Class International, Canada Post's small/light packets) while a CN23 would be generated for parcel post items.

[inuk_the_polar_bear]

The mailing label is the CN22.