@marnotom! wrote:
Do you have anything to say in response to any of my points or are you just going to continue to take cheap potshots?
eBay and Pitney Bowes aren't likely going to do much with the GSP as it currently stands if all they see are erroneous posts about it being "illegal" or a "scam." They're going to dismiss these comments as being from Canadians who are ignorant about how the application of taxes and duty on personal imports works.
This is more or less correct. The terms are all spelled out very clearly in black and white, and it's up to the buyer and seller both to agree to them.
What's less obvious is that the buyer doesn't always know there's an alternative to the GSP, the seller doesn't always realize that just about everything sent via parcel service will incur a brokerage fee, and nearly everything shipped cross-border will be subject to taxes even if our government chooses not to impose them much of the time. With GSP, you pay brokerage and taxes on every purchase regardless of how the package is actually shipped, and you get the added "bonus" of waiting for it to go to Kentucky first.
Shipping via plain ole tracked US Mail is still the best way to get most things from the US into Canada. If you get a package that way and our government chooses to tax you on it, then oh well you pay it. If it's something you're afraid the USPS is going to lose or mutilate then you pay extra for a parcel service and be ready to pay twice more when they ding you for brokerage and taxes. And if the seller doesn't want to go through the effort of international shipping, or wants to charge you extra handling to do it, then that's still the buyer's problem. None of those things has changed.
What you don't do is yell at sellers for choosing GSP, or ask them to falsify customs forms, or accuse PB or eBay of running a scam or breaking the law. The program itself doesn't suck, but it's definitely poorly-understood, poorly-explained and not optimally tuned for Canadians' liking; if we want to improve that situation we need to be more constructive in the way we identify these shortcomings and plead for changes.
