Canadians shopping in the USA

[justino_14]

I just found out about a service called "Cross Boarder Pickups". Basically you shop in the USA and you can have a package shipped to their facility in the USA and from there they can either ship it directly to you or to their facility in Mississauga where you can pick it up. One major advantage of this in terms of purchasing wet shaving supplies is you can purchase from vendors who ship only within the USA. Also if you have multiple packages you can consolidate the shipping.

One downside is that I don't always get taxed from ordering things from the USA, in which this service will always charge tax for the items you buy. They also don't charge you any handling fee when you actually get charged taxes/duties which is usually around $10. So if you know for sure you will be charges taxes/duties, this can save you money.

I was wondering if any other Canadians use services like this, and I also wanted to let people know services like this exist (I am in no way affiliated with this company). It came about when I wanted to purchase a badger shaving brush from the USA from a vendor who was unable to ship animal hair to Canada. Using a service like this allows me to purchase such an item. I know there are several companies like this, but this one seems to have the most reasonable rates.

 

[MVD1]

Thanks for this. US-only shipping is frustrating--just like seeing that jump in price with the conversion rate.

 

[6Cuda6]

You can also ship to alot of the UPS/FedEx stores by the boarder. ..they will hold it for you to pick up...a little fee of 5$ generally is charged but given the shipping costs etc thats a steal.

 

[brucered]

I ship my Amazon.com, eBay.com and some other stuff that is CONUS only shipping, to a border parcel service.

Mine will hold any parcel for 90 days for $5 a parcel. After that, they have a right to start charging more fees per month. They let me know when the parcel arrived, where it's from, what the tracking number was and consolidate orders when ready to pickup. I walk in, 5 min later I walk out with my parcels.

No taxes, no duty, no issues, way cheaper then getting it shipped directly or redirected to me in Canada. When I have stuff of any value sent directly to me, the shipping is expensive, I get charged duty, taxes and have no tracking.

When I go on road trips, I make sure I'm down for few days and never have to pay duty or taxes.

I've been using them for a few years now and highly recommend anyone who is within driving distance to the border, to see if you have one near, you probably do.