BRS Shipping Fees Excessive

[snarkys]

Hi,
I hate shipping, taxes and brokerage as much as the next guy however they are real charges that have to be dealt with. Please keep in mind we are located in the US so this is an international transaction. To be clear not only do we not overcharge Canadians on this we loose money on the shipping, tax and brokerage charges.
On the charges
1) The item you are looking at is around 40 pounds which makes it expensive to ship
2) There is a 15% tax which covers the GST , PST and duties to the province where the shipments originally arrive. We charge this on our site and prepay it so it arrives on your doorstep without additional charges and surprise fees. We feel this is the most honest hassle free way of doing business with our customers
3) By shipping all of the packages together on Friday we are able to take part of a program that lowers the brokerage fees enough that we are willing to pay them for you out of our own pockets. For example typical brokerage fees on a $200 package with fed ex or UPS would be almost $50 so this is a huge savings.
I hope this answers your questions

[fencer]

do you ship USPS?

[snarkys]

No but believe me we would do it if it made sense at all. USPS has a variety of issues from both customer and business standpoints. We are trying to find a way to let the customer have the best of both worlds.

1) USPS often charges more for postage than other services but the low brokerage fees make up for this. If there are no brokerage fees it simply costs more. Since we pay your brokerage fees for you USPS is more expensive in almost all cases.

2) USPS's tracking is next to worthless. Most the time it only says it left here and then updates that it has been delivered. This is no help when you are trying to figure out when a package is going to arrive. It also doesn't help when the package got held by customs and it has been two weeks with no delivery ...

3) Our experience is USPS is really unreliable. One shipment will arrive really fast and another shipped on the same day mysteriously takes three weeks. This can be pretty distressing it if is your new $500 skimmer.

4) International packages over a certain weight need to be hand delivered to a post office employee, this is typically all of our packages. Sometimes the wait there is 10 minutes and sometimes it is an hour, Most businesses simply don’t have time for this type of shinanigins.

5) the USPS’s API for integrating their shipping costs into a websites calculator is poor at best. Often results in the customer being both drastically over and under billed because of limited weight and box size options. It is also incapable of telling you that this item is to heavy or to large to be shipped with USPS

6) They also have size and weight limitations. USPS doesn’t take packages over approximately 2 cubic feet which isn’t that big and certainly doesn’t lend itself to our “bulk packaged” idea.

[lastlight]

No complaints here. I'm a happy customer and will continue to come back. Always felt like prices were fair and yeah...it's shipped from the US too.

[viperfish]

Don't get me wrong here people, I'm not complaining about the products. I have BRS products and love them. I just entered the one product and shipping/tax/brokerage cost scared the crap out of me. I guess I have to try different quantities until I find the "sweet spot". I do think UPS are a bunch of crooks taking advantage of people shipping things across the border and that has nothing to do with BRS or any other reputable dealer from the US, it's just a time proven fact. About a year ago I ordered a $25 part for my laptop and UPS charged me $25 at the door before they would hand it over, I have been chapped ever since.

[mark]

After being hoses a couple of times with UPS brokerage fees when shipping from the States, I mostly buy Canadian now and if need to go through the States I'll only deal with a supplier that will ship USPS. If supplier only deals with UPS, I'll just find another company.

(guess bit of a hijack since never ordered fr BRS (and since no USPS guess never will))

[intarsiabox]

I have to agree about only dealing with companies in the US that ship USPS. I have been getting orders (not just fish stuff) shipped for years with USPS and have never had a single problem and it is much cheaper as brokerage rates are usually around 50% of the product value and has nothing to do with weight. General freight prices are also cheaper than UPS and Fedex before brokerage is even added on. I ordered (2) 24" 4 bulb T5 light fixtures from florida and shipping was only $23 for both units. A year or so ago I tried buying a JBJ nano cube but the company would only send via Fedex, shipping was around $50.00 but then I got a bill in the mail for $250 for brokerage. Luckily Fedex smashed the tank to pieces so they had to take it back. I'll admit that it sometimes takes up to 2 weeks to get the product but the delay seems to usually be caused by canadian customs and canada post (which seems to be getting very slow). I have cheap scotsman friend who flys model airplanes and he only buys with USPS as well and has been doing so for 30 years without issue but has saved a ton of cash in that period of time.

[dankent]

Same ... and agree about the USPS tracking ... Canpost is the same ... I like the fact that the shipment comes and i dont need to scramble for cash to cover duty/ brokerage ... and UPS gets it through the border faster then USPS/Canpost ... in every instance i have ordered from US and shipped USPS i allways waited a couple + days longer then UPS deliveries.

[Binare]

How are you charging for gst and pst without having a number? Where exactly does that money go? Will my invoice include your gst/pst numbers? I didn't think a non canadian company could register for those numbers.

[fencer]

The brokerage company charges the GST