Self-Declaring through Canadian Customs...

Martin W said:
Hi Apprentice
I have never used the B-15 form.
I have everything shipped from the US to CBI in Niagara Falls NY. They are a post office box and UPS /FedEx handler. They charge around $5.00 to accept a package, then you pick it up at your leisure and declare when you cross the bridge.
Martin
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I will definitely have to look more into this CBI. It annoys me a lot when sellers on Amazon.com keep telling me they can not ship to Canada, when I am a 2-minute walk from New York. This may be a solution.

Of course, you still have to pay the $5 tollbridge fee when crossing back home! There is no such thing as NAFTA, lol.
 
Watch Canada Post! Usually no issues with them getting parcels from the US but one time I had a small parcel delivered to the local post office and when I went to pick it up they said there were taxes due of about $3. No big deal and most of the time they don't bother to collect taxes on small things but this time they did and there was a service fee of $10 added to the taxes. Turns out Canada Post charges $10 to collect the taxes and forward them to Revenue Canada. So the Government is effectively charging me $10 to take my money.:mad: Luckily there weren't any duties on it.
 
The last time I went to Canada Post to pick up a package, had to pay $20 (duties they said). Was my radius turning tool... after waiting for half a year on back-order!
 
So... I just made an account today for CBI and am sending my first purchase of this year to it, and we'll see how it goes. An added boost I didn't think about before, is that some shipping companies actually charge a lower fee for shipping to commercial rather than residential.
 
The company I do work for ships freight quite often to Red Deer. It goes motor freight to a place up at the Canadian border either in Montana or maybe it's North Dakota. It's handed off to the Canadian freight company and they take care of getting it to the customer up there. I;m sure there is some kind of taxes collected when it arrives in Red Deer. Actually, I believe the taxes are collected when it crosses over at the boarder. I'll have to fine out some time I'm up there.
 
A couple of months ago a woman in California sent me a sewing machine accessory that weighed very little in a small box, via USPS. Came to my door and the postman said I owe him $35.28. What!?. The woman stated that value at usd200. On the Canada Border agency form it said value for duty cdn194.92.. no duty but GST of $23.34 and $9.95 handling fee. The part was only worth a couple of bucks at the most. And how they determined the value I have no idea

The next time she sent me 4 and I said to list them as $2.50 each..which she did and this time no charges at all. And what is worse I am not buying them, she is sending them to me so I can duplicate them and then send them back to her.

David
 
Someday, somehow, cross border trade between Canada and the US has to get better and easier.
Both for commercial and personal shipments. Come on - we fight wars together for crying out loud!

My father worked for Furnas Electric back in the '60's and setup the Canadian distributorship with a company up there.
He had some good times traveling back and forth for 3+ years, but I remember his stories of frustration with the red tape.

In the late 70's I worked at a company outside Chicago that had plants in Mississippi and in Belleville Ontario.
Our 100T punch press went down so it was decided to ship (4) of the large dies up to Belleville for the parts run.
These dies were 30 or 40 years old, they were for making the chain links and other pieces for coal handling conveyors in commercial buildings.
They were held up at the border by US customs, because some inspector or whomever thought there were for fabricating ordnance weapons.
I was tasked with retrieving and putting together the products engineering drawings, the drawings of the tooling (which luckily resided in the flat files in my office area.) and then for added measure we found some old sales literature from the 30's and included that as well.
Took six weeks to clear customs... The company had been shipping tooling back and forth for eons and I guess this was the first time something was held up.

During the '90's I had a couple of friends up in Ontario. Computer components were hard to get at reasonable prices. So I would put together care packages and shipped them off the month before their birthdays. Listed them as gifts - which they were, and only once did a shipment get hung up. Tony had to go to the PO and show his ID and they accepted that it was actually a gift so he didn't have to pay any additional charges/taxes. Tony guessed that they had randomly chose the package for closer inspection be cause it was re-taped and had some sort a inspection sticker on it.
 
Customs hold ups happen going in both directions and totally random on which package gets hit. Sometimes even getting it out of US Customs prior to getting it into Canada can be laughable. Yes sometime exiting the US is the problem. One time we needed a repair part for a Branson degreaser and could not get it from the states even though the part is actually made in China! It was a 1/2” SS pipe elbow in 304. Crazy.
 
David S said:
A couple of months ago a woman in California sent me a sewing machine accessory that weighed very little in a small box, via USPS. Came to my door and the postman said I owe him $35.28. What!?. The woman stated that value at usd200. On the Canada Border agency form it said value for duty cdn194.92.. no duty but GST of $23.34 and $9.95 handling fee. The part was only worth a couple of bucks at the most. And how they determined the value I have no idea

The next time she sent me 4 and I said to list them as $2.50 each..which she did and this time no charges at all. And what is worse I am not buying them, she is sending them to me so I can duplicate them and then send them back to her.

David
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Yup, CBA determines the value of the product as being the declared value. They don't mind if it's too high, or accurate, only if it's too low (and it's got to be fairly obvious that it is too low, and that the real value is enough to be worthwhile to collect the fee's for it).

And you may want to contact CBA to find out how to either indicate that the product is only temporarily in your possession, so you either don't have to pay duty/taxes on it, or you can get the duty/taxes refunded when the product is returned...
 
The_Apprentice said:
So... I just made an account today for CBI and am sending my first purchase of this year to it, and we'll see how it goes. An added boost I didn't think about before, is that some shipping companies actually charge a lower fee for shipping to commercial rather than residential.
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UPS charges less for a commercial address than a residential address. Lost packages are less because they are always handing off directly to a person at a business (one that is open). They also deliver to commercial addresses first. I had a driver tell me in order for a legal business to be considered commercial it must have its own driveway not connected to a residential driveway or parking area. I wonder what they do about apartment complexes. LOL. I walked the driver through my operation and asked what I could do to get deliveries during the day instead of dumped at night. He had an attitude and basically told me I was SOL. Some years later at my new house with my shop next door I made friendly with two or three of the drivers, and now items addressed to my business name get delivered during the day instead of at night. Stuff that just has my name or my wife's name on it still get delivered whenever they feel like it.
 
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