Canadian Customers Brokerage Fees

For our Canadian customers

 

Thank you so much for shopping with us. We all know about additional fees like taxes and import duties for international shipping, but we have been hearing reports about an extra cost specifically targeting our Canadian friends. It’s something that we've only recently begun to see mentioned. It is charged by shipping companies on goods coming into Canada, at least from the USA.

 

We’ve done some research and spoken to customers to learn from their stories. From those efforts, here is what we’ve discovered that may be helpful:

• The brokerage fee can be avoided. You can’t skip out on duties and taxes, but you have a choice about the brokerage fee. Contact the Canada Border Services Agency closest to you in order to self-account for your goods. If the courier accounts for you, they will charge you the brokerage fees and we have no way of knowing what they're allowed to charge or how much of that they will decide to charge each customer for each shipment. It’s always a lot.
• The brokerage fee itself may not include duties and taxes according to regulations. So be aware that you will still have to pay those. Some brokerage agents may lump them together but it’s technically not the same, so watch out.
• Before you ship, consider these tips:

• UPS seems to charge the highest fees. Your experience may vary but that’s what we’ve found so far.
• USPS (regular mail) hands off to regular Canada Post and they're much more reasonable.
• If a shipment shows up at your door and the shipper insists on some excessive amount for brokerage fees, you can refuse the shipment in order to handle it yourself. It isn’t too late to do so. The shipper may try to convince you otherwise or scare you by saying that the CBSA can charge insane taxes but it’s not true. There are specific amounts that are charged for duties and taxes and it’s not 70% (a number quoted to one of our customers) for our products.
• I would also point you to this page from the CBSA for more information about self-clearing your shipment.

We really hope this info helps and if you have any more useful information to help out fellow Canadians, feel free to share it with us and say something over in the Flite Test Forums!