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Companies that Still Don't Ship to Canada?
mstich asks: "I'm curious as to why some companies make it so difficult to ship to Canada (from the U.S.A.). I'm only about 200km (124mi) from Detroit, so distance surely can't be the problem. Companies like NewEgg state that they won't ship to Canada, even though they will ship to Alaska (albeit, at an inflated cost) and some, like Crucial, do ship to Canada but they won't extend their 'free second day shipping'. Are there really that many underlying costs that show up when crossing the border? Is this just another money grabber? Does NAFTA fit into all of this, somehow?"
you canadians are all the same with your beady little eyes and your flapping heads
Ask a lawyer. Maybe the legal departments of large companies won't allow them to do business in Canada because they don't want to incur the expense of complying with Canadian law.
Just a guess.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Well, it might in some way, but the big bottleneck is US Customs Service. And Canada's equivalent might be a player in the equation as well.
I believe that you still need to fill out customs documents. Call UPS and just ask what paperwork they need to ship to Canada.
/., where "Apple and Google provide Iran with nukes" will be refuted with "But Microsoft is a convicted monopolist"
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
There are a couple of problems, one small, and one not so small.
1. Extra forms to fill out. The company either doesn't want to take the time to fill out the single (small) form, or thinks that the forms will take a long time. Understandable, but frustrating to the paying customer.
2. Irate phone calls from customers who were levied heavy brokerage fees. I was one of these customers a few weeks back, when I got nailed TWICE with brokerage fees (to the US, and back into Canada) for a piece of hardware I sent back for free repair. I bitched so hard at UPS that they dropped the brokerage fees. However, even after that, the cost of the free, under-warranty repair was still $100 US.
Brokerage fees drive me nuts, since most of the time they appear after the fact, and are not consistently applied. This is very frustrating, not to mention expensive.
Also, bear in mind that while a distributor might have the rights for a product in the States, there is no guarantee that they have the rights to distribute that same product in Canada.
Issues like support come into effect; normally, if you buy a product in the States, service for that item are doine through the US based manufacturer, not the manufacturer's Canadian arm.
Some manufacturer's actaully sell different "model" numbers in the two countries with slightly different feature sets. for instance documentation in English & French; not just English..
There are several reasons; one is that the necessary paperwork to get the package through customs is a pain in the ass for the seller. They don't want the hassle.
Another reason is that many sellers only have permission to sell products in the U.S.A. -- i.e., they haven't bought the rights to sell the product in Canada. You need to find another distributor who has bought those rights, but sometimes that's difficult because the (smaller) Canadian distributor isn't nearly as well-known.
--
Twoflower
President a moron? Gee probably. Paul Martin and Jean Chretien are responsible for this. Fucking tools.
Some companies have return, replacement, or warranty policies that say they'll pay the shipping in certain circumstances. Since shipping to canada costs a lot more (fees, tarrifs, etc), that can cost them a lot of money.
Have you tried asking any of the companies in question? Believe it or not, they may be staffed by humans who can answer your questions.
Crap, I sound like a troll.
I worked for an online car parts store, and we refused to ship to Canada. Why? Because when the online store first opened we did ship to Canada, but the package would get held up in customs. On top of that there are additional charges (on top of UPS/FedEX rates) to get it OUT of customs. It became this awful nightmare, getting phone calls from irate Canadians who blamed us when shipping a part from Iowa to Windsor cost $70 and would take 3 weeks. Yes, there are ways around it (I think if you sent it FedEX Air FedEX would take care of customs) but do you know how expensive it is to ship a radiator by air? So, we either stopped offering it or we offered FedEX Air which was extremely expensive.
Problems with shipping to Canada:
;)
CBSA are notorious for holding up packages for weeks for customs clearance. Sometimes things "go missing."
Cross-border claims for goods damaged/missing in shipment are a giant hassle. In certain high-value businesses (like computer parts), there are plenty of fraudsters who take advantage of this, claiming goods never arrived and disputing the charges.
It doesn't matter to the merchant whether the recipient has committed fraud or the item has been stolen or destroyed in shipment or customs clearance - they still end up eating cost. Apparently this happens sufficiently often with trans-border shipments that a lot of computer vendors won't ship to foriegn countries, or even to "America Junior".
Compounding the issue are territorial reseller agreements - some manufacturers limit a reseller to domestic sales only. If you sell some items that you can't sell to a foreign buyer, it's often easier to reject all foreign orders than to have to check each order for said items.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
"I'm only about 200km ..."
thats the reason.
As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
Customs.
I used to have to get stuff shipped from the US to Canada, and I was constantly running into customs issues. And yes, this was after NAFTA.
To sell stuff in Canada, you have to conform to all sorts of regulations. One example is bilingual documentation. It's a waste of NewEgg's time & money to have to check each product for compliance.
Certain items may have a import duty on them as well, in which case the shipper collects it from you (the buyer) upon delivery. If you refuse to pay the fees (which are often outrageous), the vendor eats the shipping cost.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
In addition to the legal risks and direct costs others have mentioned, It's a lot cheaper to develop an e-commerce product that only supports U.S. domestic shipping and payment methods. Often the APIs for foreign locations require a complete re-work of the product... it's twice as much work to write a postal code and province validator for another country, so you have to justify the time and expense. Not to mention if you're doing things right you're quoting prices in loonies not USD. It's not that much work, but it is the perception of a ton of extra work that is the barrier to entry for internationalizing systems.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
Is that _still_ a separate country? Damn, I thought we annexed them a long time ago.
I'm not sure I could respect any country that considers a 'Smartie' a stale-tasting M&M-like candy. Yuck.
Okay, I'll concede - we'll take BC and the Yukon; you can keep the rest. That way we can get to and from Alaska (over land) without going through customs. Getting through the US/Canada border is about 50 times harder than the US/Mexico one. (Fact)
It's mostly our fault. We mericans have treated you Canadians like you are part of the US for so long, that now you're actually starting to believe it.
Sorry, you really are in a different country.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Believe it or not, there are plenty of US companies that cannot store Canadian addresses in their databases. It is quite common for in-house software systems to expect numeric postal codes, and postal codes of exactly length 5.
Most people in the US tend to look at you funny the first time they hear you say "postal code" instead of "ZIP code".
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Last time I checked their president was a moron...
I'm curious as to why some companies make it so difficult to ship to Canada (from the U.S.A.).
I don't know why, either, but I can suggest a practical work-around:
1. Find an elderly person in the Lower 48 states who takes a bunch of expensive prescriptions drugs. That's nearly any old person, so this part is easy.
2. Offer to ship the old fart some of your cheap Canadian versions of prescription drugs. Given the exorbitant prices of the same drugs in the U.S. will immediately agree to your proposal. Then have gramps ship you cheap American electronic products in exchange.
3. Profit!
(This comment is a satiric joke about the American health "care" system. It is not advocacy for or instruction in black market cross-border transactions. orthogonal is not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. orthogonal is not a doctor and this is not medical advice. Void where prohibited. orthogonal loves America and its great Christian Leaders King George Bush, Failed Marshall von Rumsfeld, and Inquisitor General John Ashcroft. Scaring peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty... only aid[s] terrorists [by eroding] our national unity and diminish[ing] our resolve. We have always been at war with Eastasia!)
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The asshole that has the same name as you? Read the fine FAQ.
Ever browse at -1:Uncut and Raw?
CDW stopped shipping to Canada when they bought out MicroWarehouse and MacWarehouse Canada last year. Now you need to call CDW Canada (1-800-603-8966) to place an order from within Canada. The only problem was with Apple, who don't allow their products to be shipped across the border, but now that the iPod mini is available up here its not such a big deal anymore.
Well, we endure the WASP hatred of North America, so we get the good stuff. Canadians don't have to deal with such hatred, so they don't get the goodies.
Even Steven, in the end....
-bZj
.sig
If you can't get it shipped, try buying Local! If a company is willing to ship it here (Canada), they probably have a Candian version of the Store.. Like Tigerdirect or Amazon (although Amazon.ca doesn't have much compared to Amazon.com)
Or simply buy at a local store... Like the Vermont public TV said: "A dollar spent in Vermont stays in Vermont"... Apply where you live...
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
I don't think too many companies operating in the States would voluntarily shut themselves out of TEN PERCENT of the US market; that's about the proportion in additional sales that Canada would represent.
;-)
In tech, since Canada is arguably the most wired nation in the world (can't recall where I saw the stats, but I did see them recently), the market gains might be even higher. Think that's insignificant? Walk over to your sales department and ask them if they'd like you to boost sales by ten percent.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
but so annoying, is going on "mapquest.ca" but it just pointing to mapquest.com, as opposed to maybe the Canadian version (say you go to global maps etc). It'd be nice if it pointed to the global maps and had Canada as the default. :(
Paperwork. You have to fill out more forms when shipping internationally. That and their streamlined shipping process probably doesn't fit in with the extra work/alternate shipping methods.
just another ploy to try to take over the world. First Canada. Then Mexico. Then the rest of the world.
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
1. Going through customs is a pain in the ass.
2. See #1.
3. See #2.
Shipping to Canada is no easier than shipping to Mexico, England, Russia, China, or any other country. It takes less time, but the process is still the same. I've sent a few items to Canada and thus far have not had a problem, but I've been sending used items of small value. Not new computer equipment that I'm sure would be held up.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
That's kind of my general rule, too (with the exception of my trusty power supply). Mostly because after the aforementioned episode, they sent me threatening letters for three months (despite numerous calls to their customer disservice line) asking me to pay the brokerage fees they'd already cancelled! Wankers.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Our company recently created a mess for ourselves trying to ship something to Canada when a critical shipment was returned to us because we didn't have the proper customs forms filled out. We do low-volume, high-cost sales, so we just double the shipping costs now to Canada just like for other foreign countries, but I can see a large-volume, low-margin company deciding not to deal with any of it.
The whole thing surprised me. I figured what with NAFTA and crossing the border so easily that shipments wouldn't be a problem. I mean, their phone numbers even look like ours.
HAHA HAHAHA, WOW! SOmeone mod this +1999 FUNNY cuz it is teh first time ive ever heard such a funny thin gabout MR. JEORGE BUSHES! OMFGWTFBBQ!!!1!
The customs costs can be high, there is a lot of paperwork, and they have to fill out a lot of insurance claims due to "beaver damage".
Mod Parent up!
... I always thought Canada was part of the US.
...are far less of an obstacle than they are made out to be. I order from small specialty companies in the USA fairly often. I sometimes have to pay a shipping surcharge, and always specify that I will clear items through customs myself. However, the big courier companies have all managed to ship my purchases quickly and easily.
;-)
Now postal service is another issue. USPS shipments to Canada get blackholed so frequently it's just not worth it. But really - why use one country's postal service to ship to another country? Use an international carrier in the first place. (I don't know whether it's the USPS or Canada Post dropping my packets, and I'm not trying to assign blame. I just know stuff doesn't get through and it's kind of daft - for me at least - to keep using them.)
Anyway, Canadian law does restrict entry on certain items (off the top of my head, certain kinds of firearms would be a good example). Other than items that are banned in Canada, I haven't heard of legal issues shipping here from the States. Can you give me an example? I should add that I'm from the USA originally; not only does my family ship a lot of private stuff back and forth, we make a lot of purchases from the US as well.
And shipping via a big courier company from the US to Canada is pretty painless. If your shipping department can't handle it, I think there might be something wrong with your shipping department.
Now what do you mean about programming for international shipping? Are you saying that if your order system was designed so poorly that it can't handle orders to the USA's biggest trading partner (let alone other international destinations), and can't easily be expanded to handle them, that it's not worth the cost of changing it? Sounds like a specious argument to me, but if you have specifics, I'd love to hear them. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I believe this was a reference to South Park's Terence and Phillip. SP seems to look up to Canada's social progressiveness.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
Personally, I think that this has nothing to do with a lack of market. Even though Canada has a smaller population than the U.S., there are still plenty of people who would order products via the internet or a catalog. Really, I think the issue is in the transportation of goods across the border, especially in the case of electronic equipment. In going on a business trip to Canada, I had to bring several PCs with me, and was stopped at the border for nearly an hour. Even though the borders are "open", both Canada and the U.S. are cautious about allowing certain goods to pass through without considerable questioning.
I work for a major credit card processor. Don't worry, I'm already at the karma cap.
Electronic credit card processing systems have an address verification service available. My company primarily uses Vital Processing Services (vitalps.com) and that system's address verification service supports checking the leading digits of the street address, as well as the billing zip code. It does this by sending an address-verification query to systems owned by whatever bank owns that card. That bank checks that query against their billing information for that customer, and reports back if some or all of the address information matches ("ZIP MATCH", "EXACT MATCH", "NO MATCH", etc.)
This address verification service only supports numeric zip codes and street addresses. If address verification is attempted against a Canadian address, the address verification system returns SYSTEM NOT AVAILABLE. (It's not available because the bank that issues that card is in a foreign country, even if someone types in a 5-digit zip code when doing the transaction.)
It's impossible for an Internet merchant to get perfect protection against fraud while accepting payment from Visa or Mastercard, but they can eliminate many of the common sources of fraud by always using a tracking shipping carrier (and getting a signature proof of delivery every time), and only shipping to an address that the address verification system indicates a match with. (If the customer is ordering an item as a gift, sending it to a different address than they receive their credit card billing statements at, best practices state the merchant should ask the customer to call their bank and "whitelist" that shipping address.)
Since many (most?) processing systems' address verification services don't support international address verification, most merchants must choose to either ship merchandise internationally without getting an address match, or to manually find the phone number for the bank that issued the card and *call them*. (Merchants who accept credit cards are given access to a system that lets them look up the first 6 digits of a Visa card or the first 11 digits of a Mastercard and find the bank that issued that card.) For small merchants, or merchants with occasional big-ticket purchases, they can take the time to personally attend to those transactions and make phone calls. For a large discount Internet superstore of some kind, though, they just don't have time to personally handle every address-mismatch.
So for convenience, they just refuse to accept cards that return a SYSTEM NOT AVAILABLE address-verification match.
--Michael Spencer
The customs problem is a big one, or more acurately, the god awful UPS brokerage charges, which usually far exceed the actual duties.
What's funny is that there are lots of companies who manage to ship to Canada, or even to drop ship large groups of items and then ship from within the country.
It is possible to handle Canadian orders successfully and without surprises, and some retailers even have sites that will calculate brokerage and duties before you commit to the order.
Ultimately it really comes down to one thing - some companies really don't want an extra 30 million customers.
NAFTA never did much for individuals or everyday consumers. Mostly it just allows large corporations to move money (and some people) around with less overhead.
Three Squirrels
/me *heart* Crucial
The fact that no one understands you doesn't mean you're an artist.
If you are not too far from the border lookup a store that has mailboxes. In the past I have used a UPS store just across the border. The UPS store I use charges $5 per shipment, and dosen't require any addition paperwork or other nonsense. I just give them a call before ordering. As a bonus the store has a real shipping address, not a PO BOX so all companies will deliver there.
Also some shops don't have an online order form for a Canadian address, but if you call they will sometimes ship to you. Due to brokerage fees the US PostalService is still the best way to ship across the border. Usually it is pretty fast.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All I can say is that it's never happened to me, nor have I heard of it happening to anyone I know - and my family orders a lot of stuff from the States. You can be sure that if it did happen, though, I'd be complaining loudly and publicly until they did something about it. ;-)
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Actually in the 2001 census, 17% of the population listed their ethnic origin as being partially Canadian and 23% entirely Canadian. "North American Indian" was a separate category.
I'm not sure that ethnic origin and "race" should be considered synonymous, but I think this is enough evidence to demonstrate your ignorance.
BLAME CANADA!
oops..... they killed kenny...
again....
Another thing you have to remember about business is that you need to focus your marketing and sales efforts. 10M people does not necessarily mean 10M potential customers. Hell, my company won't do business with 99% of the US population and we're doing just fine, thanks. But I gotta tell ya that if I was in the e-commerce business, I'd be much quicker to translate my frickin' pages into Spanish and sell to all the Hispanics in the US and the 105 million Mexicans in Mexico than I would bother with Canada.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I wonder about exactly how legal these "brokerage" fees are.
Firstly, you've got the postal rate for shipping a package to Canada. They know that they'll likely have to assess a package for tax if it's crossing the border. You've already paid your fee for the postal service, why shouldn't that be included (and yes, I know it depends on the value of the package, but that's b.s. in itself since it doesn't cost any more to assess tax on a $250 package than a $50 one)
Secondly, you as the reciever are 90% of the time being charged after the fact for a package. You have no formal arrangement with the shipping broker, nor have you been given the allowance to assess the fees of their service. Basically, they have supplied a service without duely informing you, and charged you afterwards.
Can I give somebody an invoice to fix their computer for $100, then tax on an extra $25 as an "oh, well that's because I had to assess the taxes" as a waybill a week after I've sent the machine home? Damn straight I can't, so why can they.
Pehaps I'll try paying the fees via Visa next time, and then backcharging the bastards.
As per the recipient claiming goods were missing, etc... how is this any different from shipping to a local?
When I get a package, it must be signed for indicating it appears to be in good shape and seems to be together, etc. Anything that hasn't arrived... not signed for.
You can check that it was signed off upon receipt, you know.
For anyone using Paypal from Canada... this also seems to apply. As I've used it for 2 years many times over, but it still shows that my actual address is unverified...
Also, a lot of American sellers on eBay will only ship within the US. I've never checked, but I'm sure very few people from Canada or any other country limit their auctions to thier own country.
BTW in Chapter 10, article 1007 prohibits specifying a specific vendor or product in a tender. In other words any tenders specifiying cruft like M$, M$-Windows, M$-Exchange, etc. is in direct violation of NAFTA.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I contacted someone on the NewEgg.com staff via e-mail regarding their international shipping policies. I was told the main reason they didn't ship to Canada was that it would be difficult for them to prosecute fraudulent credit card users, among other things. So it's essentially a conflict of laws. You might want to use NCIX.com in the meantime. I also find BBF.ca useful.
The only difference between genius and stupidity is genius has its limits.
This is even more asinine when you consider that full U.S. ZIP codes are nine digits and a hyphen. Only the first five are required for most mail, but if you know all nine, you should use them. At the very least, it provides some sanity checking against the rest of the address.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.