Extravagant shipping fee to Canada

[elsi_gril*44]

Why, as a Canadian, am I paying so much for shipping? Today alone I decided against purchasing items due to the incredibly high shipping fee.

[femmefan1946]

International shipping is expensive.

Tracked international shipping is even more expensive.

(Tracking is an important Seller Protection, which does nothing for Buyers who are covered by eBay's Money Back Guarantee.)

Here are the Canada Post rates. Fill in the country and make a guess at dimensions to see what you would pay to ship to the seller.

https://www.canadapost.ca/cpotools/apps/far/business/findARate?execution=e1s1

And here are the USPS rates. They are harder to negotiate.

https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440

While sellers could use First Class International Parcel rates to Canada, many will think that Canada shipments need the same value of postage as overseas shipping. And USPS makes it easy to find expensive Priority rates and hard to find the cheaper FCIP rates. (They are at the bottom of the list you see when you choose Shape and Size).

[marnotom!]

I think some of the perception of a "high" shipping rate may have something to do with the fact that an item's value doesn't necessarily correlate with its shipping price.

I had no problems with paying US$11-13 to have brand new mobile phones with a packaged weight of less than 300 grams shipped to me from the US via the Global Shipping Program.

On the other hand, I can appreciate that somebody buying an item of a similar weight with a value of about US$10 might object to paying more than the item's value for shipping.

[momcqueen]

All the better reason to support your local Canadian sellers.

[Anonymous]

You have to be careful with the shipping. Alot of sellers jack the shipping up to compensate for a cheaper product price,hoping you do not notice,Its an old practice,but its getting pretty bad.Sometimes if you pay attention to the shipping prices more than the price,you can usually find a pretty good deal(as silly as that sounds)Shipping like everything else is going up in price,but the shipping prices on this site have to be regulated to be honest

[renall]

Ebays Global Shipping is like they don't want Canadians to buy outside of Canada. Shipping  a $5.00 card to US is $1.20 . To ship A $5.00 card with seller using Ebays Global Shipping ( as most Americans use) is about $24.00. Asking if they will ship cheaper is a waste of time as most wounld. The answer I always get is we only use Ebays Global Shipping( an unfair shipping choice).

I can buy a Hobby Box worth 110.00 from card company and pay only $11.09. Does anyone see a make money on shipping example?

[ypdc_dennis]

apples vs oranges: untracked at $1.20 versus tracked with all taxes and duty handled.

[femmefan1946]

The problem is not the possible shipping charges that COULD be used, depending on the service the seller chooses, but on the paranoia and xenophobia of the seller. US sellers are terrified of shipping outside the lower 48. Did you know they can refuse to ship to Hawai'i, Alaska, and Puerto Rico? More strangely they can refuse to ship to APO addresses which are the ones used by active service troops.

[esclyons]

yes cross border shipping is very expensive.. and if you happened to buy something through the Global shipping program, then it will seem even higher..

[elsi_gril*44]

Sorry, but I don't accept that shipping fee can be as high as US$25.00-32.00 for a top which weighs only a few ounces and is packaged in a small, light plastic bag.

[momcqueen]

Have you talked to USPS about that? They might beg to differ. It's what they charge for international Priority service.

[femmefan1946]

@elsi_gril*44 -- Put the weight and dimension of the package in here: https://postcalc.usps.com/?country=10440 to find how much USPS is charging for similar shipments. Then add your provincial sales tax + GST. And another ~$5USD for the GSP shipping charge. Neither your seller nor eBay has anything much to do with this. I ignored duty, because it usually isn't much, it may not be dutiable because of NAFTA, and the Sales Tax will be charged whether there is duty or no.

[h6z5ivan2005]

I would appreciate purchasing from Canadians but for some reason 99% of sellers are from The US or Asia. I like to purchase from Asia shipping is lower than $!0.00 Can to free shipping. It may take a little longer  but I know it will arrive. We purchased an item that weighed 30lb far cheaper from a seller in Ca. than an item weighing 1/4 lb from NY to Ontario.

[reallynicestamps]

Population of Canada- 37,060,000

Populationof China - 1,386,000,000

Population of USA - 327,200,000

[webm7928]

Yeah the prices a nuts but i looked further into and they always seem to choose as the default the express gotta have it yesterday option.. i dig deeper into it and choose the cheaper option if its available. what really sucks is everything ships to one centre then out to us. i had an item that was coming from California and I am  in BC they sent to east first then across the border to Mississauga then back here to BC. So something that should have taken less than a week is no on week 2..

[marnotom!]

The GSP is a forwarding service. The seller ships the item to Kentucky and charges you what they charge US buyers in shipping. The GSP then forwards the item from Kentucky to you via Mississauga (less than half a day's drive from the Global Shipping Center) to your location.  You see a separate charge on your PayPal account for this part of your item's journey.

[h6z5ivan2005]

I agree with you on this. I also cancelled an order today because GSP wanted more money to ship than the items were worth. I have been a customer at ebay for 15yrs and have had enough gouging.

[marnotom!]

It's not that the GSP "wants" all that shipping charge. As a forwarding service, you're actually paying the seller for getting the item to Kentucky and the GSP for shipping the item from Kentucky to you.

[reallynicestamps]

@h6z5ivan2005 

It might help to understand where the money is going.

Any item valued over $20Cdn (~$15USD) is assessed for Canadian duty and sales taxes.

It doesn't matter where you bought it, it's the place of manufacture that matters.

So if you bought a necklace made in Zimbabwe from a US seller which was valued at $17USD you would pay duty and sales taxes to Canada.

And since the seller was using the GSP , you pay GSP ~$5 US for the service of wrangling the necklace through customs.

Your seller also charged you for shipping - and if he chose Priority International (instead of Priority Canada)  this would be very expensive.

Your seller didn't keep the money.

EBay didn't keep the money.

GSP only kept $5 of the money.

Most of your payment went to USPS or to the Canadian government.

The GSP is not a useful program for Canadian buyers, but it wasn't designed for us.

It is a Seller Protection program designed to encourage xenophobic US sellers to offer their items outside the Lower 48* and has been successful enough that it has been extended to the UK where the same problem existed (Well, Brexit, eh?)

Part of the problem is that $20 duty free allowance.

With the new NAFTA agreement that will rise to $180 ** and I suspect most of these complaints will disappear.

And then we will only have to deal with annoyed dairy farmers.

*An amazing number of US sellers will not ship to Hawaii, Alaska or Puerto Rico. Or to military personnel.

** But we will pay sales taxes on imports over $40, which is going to be another 5000-post thread come the day.