@luv4orphans wrote:
Prices for anything in Canada are usually quite a bit higher than if buying in US. Tax or no tax. That's just the way it is. So, no the phone only costs you that much more because you bought it in Canada. That's usually the norm.
I'm not sure you understand the set-up. This is the same U.S.-based seller selling the same phone on both the .com and .ca versions of the popular sales site I mentioned earlier. On the .com site, the price of the phone is US$399. On the .ca site it's C$479. Again, same seller, same phone. But I can't buy the phone from the .com site.
The difference seems to be that the site is "fulfilling" the seller's orders, so that means that they'll have some in stock in Canada and some in stock in the United States. Sure, some of that price difference will be due to transportation costs, but as I said, the invoice I got had no GST or PST on it, which it should have for a sale to BC as that site's pretty diligent about charging sales taxes, so I think some of that price difference is also because taxes and other fees have been factored into the selling price already.
And getting back on the subject of GSP and cross border import taxes and duty, I received an item today from a seller that was decent enough to not use the GSP on this specific item as I asked her if she could just send item through regular mail. She mentioned that too many of her international buyers are complaining about this and she agreed to this. To make a long story short I paid $60.00 for item. Paid around $12.00 for shipping and it came across the border with no extras added on. She marked the item as Merchandise. So this GSP program as far as I am concerned is a real money grabber and definitely the new buyer beware of ebay.
I don't follow why you're calling the GSP a "money grabber". Sure, it's more expensive than using international letter mail, but it doesn't mean that there's some fat bald cigar-smoking guy padding his pockets with cash from it. It's simply a different way of transporting items, just as parcel post and Express mail are different from international letter mail. I think if you do some more searching, you're going to find that for items that are too large to send by letter mail (First Class International) the difference in shipping costs between a directly mailed shipment and a GSP shipment are a lot smaller.
And while your item may not have been hit with taxes (Duties aren't generally charged on mailed shipments from the U.S. anyway, by the way.) don't forget that it's always a possibility for an item with a declared value of over C$20. It just doesn't happen as often as it used to in the "good old days" of eBay.
As far as I am concerned I won't go near a seller again that uses that GSP program. I always found shipping costs a bit more not to mention that duty is added on before item has reached its maximum allowable to enter into Canada. And to my understanding that is $35.00 and not $20.00 as I have seen claimed on this board. I am not 100% on this so I won't argue on this point.
I won't argue the point, either. I'll just point you straight to the source of this information:
http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/import/postal-postale/duty-droits-eng.html
I have been on ebay for 10 years and have never had a problem with the post office so will stick with that and nothing else. As far as I am concerned this GSP program is just as bad as when they went into partnership with UPS. $10.00 item got to the door
with a $58.00 brokerage fee on top of the $20.00 I had already paid for shipping. No thanks. I said send it back. This is pretty well the same thing.
... with the major difference being that with the GSP you get to see those fees in advance and decide prior to commiting to purchasing the item whether it's worth getting, as opposed to having to wait until the item's at your doorstep.
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