My Experience re. shipping to Canada
Yes, anything being imported with a price over $20.00 should have the GST collected, most of the time. Sometimes, when you've bought used off a market site, such as Ebay, they will not collect the...
Forum Discussion
I bought a solar panel kit on Amazon.ca for $250, shipping included. It was shipped from the USA. It arrived via Canada Post at our local post office. A few days later a poorly photocopied bill from FedEx arrived. Then I opened the paper attached to the box and found it was the same bill, about $3 sales tax and $20 brokerage fee (plus tax on that) based on a "commercial invoice" from the seller setting $57 as the value of the parcel. When I called Fedex to pay the fee I was told it was for paperwork and was a percentage of the value. I suppose the fee would have been $100 had the true value been given. I feel bad about cheating the government out of $8 in sales tax - it's the only way of taxing a company doing business in Canada from outside the country. But I'm grateful for cheating Fedex out of a ridiculous brokerage fee. Why would it cost more to fill out the paperwork for a different amount? Why can't a computer be trained to print out the paperwork at the cost the postal service charges, $5 I think?
It turned out FedEx carried the package as far as Edmonton, then mailed it! Perhaps Fedex knows the Post Office is better at delivering parcels in Canada, at least outside major cities. I once asked an American business why it wouldn't send via postal service. I was told it was because it was too slow and therefore costly to have an employee take parcels to a post office. Is this true? In Canada shippers can get the right to do everything that is done at the post office themselves and then drop off a truckload of parcels at a post terminal.
It turned out FedEx carried the package as far as Edmonton, then mailed it! Perhaps Fedex knows the Post Office is better at delivering parcels in Canada, at least outside major cities. I once asked an American business why it wouldn't send via postal service. I was told it was because it was too slow and therefore costly to have an employee take parcels to a post office. Is this true? In Canada shippers can get the right to do everything that is done at the post office themselves and then drop off a truckload of parcels at a post terminal.
