In the 1990s we bought gymnastics video tapes from the States. They were delivered to Canada with NO EXTRA CHARGES.

Free trade, you might call it.

Then, increasingly, the packages were held up by customs. I had to drive down to an office and pay a fee to take delivery. (Or convince the agent it was “educational materials”, exempt.)

At the same time I could buy from Amazon.com, no problems. These days I am afraid to have Amazon ship from the USA to Canada as my deliveries MIGHT be held up. (My purchases are mailed to friends in the States, instead.)

I’ve often wondered what’s going wrong with “free trade”.

UPS is the world’s largest delivery company.

But expect to get DINGED when you use them to deliver from the USA to Canada:

The normal procedure for importing goods from the U.S. for residential customers in Canada is relatively simple. They are required to pay 6% GST on the item, plus a $5 or $8 CAN handling fee collected by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) on behalf of Canada Post.

This applies for items greater than $20 CAN and gifts greater than $60 CAN in value. UPS brokers or clear the item through the CBSA and transfers a cost to the buyer.

These fees are not disclosed at the time of purchase by the seller as many sellers from the U.S. are themselves unaware of this.

As a result , there have been two class-action lawsuits filed against UPS by Canadians. The first one filed in October, 2006 by Robert Macfarlane, a resident of British Columbia alleges that the UPS brokerage is “so harsh and adverse as to constitute an unconscionable practice.”

The second filed by Ryan Wright and Julia Zislin in Ontario claims “that UPS failed to obtain consumers’ consent to act as a customs broker; to disclose the existence and/or amount of the brokerage fee; and to provide consumers with the opportunity or disclose to them how to arrange for customs clearance by themselves.”

It is possible for the recipient to avoid these brokerage fees if the parcel is being shipped by an “express” service [4], that is, another service than UPS Standard (Ground), the most widely used.

UPS – Wikipedia

source

Yes, I realize this specific problem to which I refer is caused by the Canadian government. But if George Bush was a proper right-wing politician, he should have been fighting to eliminate stupid trade barriers like this fee on both sides of the border.