Shipping to Canada - Any Issues I Should Know About?

[Leviblue]

I need to send a pen to Canada and wanted to see if anyone knew of any restrictions on sending pen blanks or items in the mail.
I thought I heard somewhere that it wasn't advisable to send wood blanks but I'm not sure. I don't want the Canadian Mounties looking for me.

Thanks for the information.

 

[arioux]

I'm ordering over 500 pen blanks a year from the Us ans never had a problem

 

[Leviblue]

Alfred,
That's good enough for me. Anyone who lives in Canada would be the expert in my opinion.
Thanks for the info.

 

[Ankrom Exotics]

We ship to Canada pretty regularly. Not much different than shipping domestically just more expensive.

 

[Leviblue]

Do I need to do the Customs form for shipping to Canada? It's the Customs Declaration CN22.

 

[hunter-27]

you just need to use the PS Form 2976(the green one) for most boxes anyway.

 

[MesquiteMan]

Do it online on the USPS website and it will bring up all the required fields that need to be filled out and print the appropriate forms for you. Really easy if you ask me and I ship a LOT to Canada.

Oh yeah, do your recipient a favor and only use USPS. UPS and Fedex charge a brokerage fee that can be pretty expensive for your recipient from what I hear.

 

[Gofer]

Curtis is correct about the brokerage fees. When a parcel gets dinged at customs when shipped with USPS/Canada Post it is generally $5 fee plus the GST or HST for the value of the contents. With UPS and other companies the fees usually start at $50 plus the GST or HST(5% or 12% tax) making the cost to high to make a purchase worthwhile in many cases.

Everyone like to complain about the postal services on both sides of the border but it is the more economical option. You can expect a parcel to average 2 to 4 weeks to make it to the buyer depending on where in Canada they live.

Hope this helps,

Bruce

 

[widows son]

Shipping FedEx

Do it online on the USPS website and it will bring up all the required fields that need to be filled out and print the appropriate forms for you. Really easy if you ask me and I ship a LOT to Canada.

Oh yeah, do your recipient a favor and only use USPS. UPS and Fedex charge a brokerage fee that can be pretty expensive for your recipient from what I hear.

I work for FedEx and with International shippers every day.

The brokerage fee is included when you ship FedEx Express, not when you ship FedEx Ground or Home Delivery. Duties and taxes are usually paid for by the recipient. You can get a rate quote including all fees on line before you ship.

You can complete the Commercial Invoice on line and print 3 copies, keep 1 for yourself.

USPS rates are going to get interesting as the USPS deals with it's losses. The rates are not going to go down.

 

[workinforwood]

The main issue with shipping wood is bark. You can't ship bark or wood with any bark on it to Canada. Soon you might find new issues shippind exotic woods too. I'm unclear about that, but I've been hearing about crack downs on the news, like Rock stars having their exotic wood guitars seized due to not having proper documentation that the wood was legally obtained. Seems overkill to me that you'd need documentation on a finished product you didn't even make. As it is right now, shipping wood with no bark is no problem to Canada, but if its in the trunk and you drive over the boarder you need paperwork statind wood is fumigated. Dealt with that issue a few times. If you have documentation its kiln dried, that equals fumigated too.