I would like to take a moment here to ask that anyone who ships anything from the US to Canada PLEASE use USPS. This is for any items you may sell on this site or on ebay or any other site or store.

I just received a $50 item from the US via UPS, it was a used SR3000 receiver which retails in Canada for $80 so I saved quite a bit. The seller without informing me and disregarding my request to ship via USPS shipped by UPS. The brokerage fee that UPS charged me was $35. This takes a used SR3000 from $50 to $85 which is more than buying a brand new one at my LHS.

Thank you to our southern nieghbors.

he probably had the customs value as the actual cost. he should have just labeled the contents as toy or better yet a gift and gave it a declared value of $1.00. i work for fedex and send stuff to canada all the time.. my buddy over there never has to pay anything extra to get it. just my 2 cents

a store probably wont do that..some will.. but ebay sellers will do that if you ask them.

Nope, the brokerage fee applied by UPS is the highest in the industry. Even if you listed the value of $10, they charge a flat rate for brokerage because their brokerage firm has to do the same paperwork for a $10 item as for a $100 item. Remember this is NOT customs or tax this is the fee the brokerage firm charges to get the item passed into Canada.

All USPS fee's include this brokerage fee in their shipping so there is no additional cost beyond GST (federal sales tax) if the item is over a certain value (I've found it's around $80 or so).

I had the same experience with UPS when shipping from US to Canada and yes, USPS is the better way to ship.