On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 Henning Wulff wrote: Subject: Re: EOS Re: B&H and UPS
Hi Henning,If B&H is now using UPS exclusively, I'll have to find another company to buy things from in the States. UPS's border (into Canada) handling fees are such that only very high priced items will be worthwhile.
Even when their are no duties or taxes, UPS typically charges around $50 per delivery; since B&H often ships from two locations, an order such as my recent 50/1.4 and 1Gb CF card would incur an extra $100 charge from UPS. Pointless.
If Canada is anything like Australia, then UPS may not be (directly) to blame. Australian Customs levies an additional (hefty) charge on parcels delivered by COURIERS coming into Australia - over and above any duty or taxes that may be normally be payable. They do NOT levy the same charge on international POSTAL deliveries to Australia.
I suspect the reason for this is that the Australian postal service is government owned, whereas courier companies are not. Sending by courier reduces the governments postal volume and therefore the profits made from the postal system. Charging an additional levy on incoming courier deliveries not only makes the gov't some additional tax income, it encourages Aussies to use the postal system next time for international deliveries....
BTW, EMS (Express Mail) which is the postal services equivalent to a courier, doesn't get charged the extra levy either. But then it's also a government owned service....
So the (private) courier companies are passing on the gov't charges to us, plus if I recall rightly a handling/transaction fee to cover the costs of them passing the gov't charges back to the gov't. This is probably why Tim Munro got his RRS plates without additional fees as they were delivered using the postal system....
Now I don't know if the situation is the same in Canada, but it sounds pretty much like what we have here.
Of course on the other hand the postal system can lose things, as I've found recently. Admittedly not very often and maybe couriers are no better, but at least they can track things. So from now on it's EMS for me (best of both worlds).
Cheers Gary
Hi Gary,
Canadian customs seems to work differently.
When goods come in from other countries, we generally have to pay sales tax, either both federal and provincial or just provincial, mostly depending on whim as far as I can tell. The carrier then charges 'handling', brokerage or some other fee on top of that. UPS is the worst, as they charge a very hefty fee even when an item is sent to the US for warranty work. The Canadian Leica distributor just went under, and until the warranty situation is worked out, we have to send warranty items to NJ. A friend just had warranty service done, and had to pay a total of $60 to UPS for a handling fee.
You used to be able to avoid this fee by going to the airport, going to the UPS office, picking up the paperwork, going to Canada Customs and paying the tax, going back to the UPS office, and then going to the actual UPS warehouse. I've done this if I have lots of time and needed the item ASAP (delivery took 1 day longer), but now UPS doesn't give you the option any more.
Canada Post has a flat fee of $5Cdn when there is tax due, which seems fair on the face of it, but is fairly onerous on the sometimes very small things that came this way. An item that is valued at $25Cdn has $1.75 tax added, and then the $5 fee.
Very often Express Mail items from Britain or Asia don't get taxed at all.
Fedex and other carriers now have a small fee that they add on, but it is also in the order of $5.
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* Henning J. Wulff
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