Shipping to Canada, any problems?

Community User Voice
#1

I’m planning on getting items shipped to Toronto Canada, does anyone have any Canada Post / Customs gotchas/issues to share?

CanadaPost has been known to lose packages or misroute them, but I’m also concerned about spurious and arbitrary charges that the customs might slap on for no apparent reason.

Anybody else got hit with these charges? or am I just being paranoid…

(once bitten…) :confused:

#2

I’ve made 4 orders with Seed Studio so far and I haven’t had any “problems” that can be blamed on one individual party. I live about 3hrs from Toronto so it arrives in the same customs office in Mississauga.

In a nutshell:

~ Seed Studio ships fast and keeps you updated through your account with the depot.

~ once shipped Seed Studio supply’s a tracking number for Hong Kong post.

~ Hong Kong post is sometimes slow, sometimes it might sit there for a week but when it’s almost ready to be shipped they’ll supply the info as to when it’s going out (at least you know they didn’t loose it!).

~ once it leaves Hong Kong you can track the package through Canada Post but from there on it’s only a reference. ie you’ll get one message saying it “arrived at customs…” then you’ll get another saying “it’s out for delivery”.Usually give it about a week or so.

~ since Seed Studio sends it by registered mail you (or someone at your home) needs to sign for it. This will show up under the tracking number/web site and say something like “sign and delivered” or “attempted delivery… sent back to post office, awaiting…”.

To be on the safe side I’d say it’s a good 3 week wait before you see anything. I can’t really help you with the customs, I’m afraid if I say something positive you may jinx me :laughing:

#3

Thanks so much for the info, it puts my mind at ease. To be fair, Canada Post never lost any of my packages, they are just too slow and the “fees” that I was hit with were by the customs. Perhaps it was an isolated case and it was not electronics, it was an artist’s proof of an etching that I got from the states. Maybe they docked me with 40 bucks worth of fees because they thought it was a ‘luxury item’ lol…

I guess i’m just going to have to order and find out how efficient canadpost is this time around. It’s pretty much luck of the draw really.

#4

Okay, so here is my experience with the ordering process (Greater Toronto Area , aka GTA):

  1. Ordered on Dec 29th. 2009
  2. Order actually shipped on Jan 4th as Seed Studios was closed for holidays
  3. Hong Kong Post sat on the order for SEVEN DAYS!!! this was by far the longest part of the wait.
  4. HK post finally got off their ass and shipped the order on Jan 11th.
  5. Arrived in Canada/Missisauga Jan 13.
  6. Customs kept it for 1 day or so, but didn’t look like they opened it. NO EXTRA FEES or Import duties were levied.
  7. Package arrived at building Jan 15th 2010.

So, basically it took 10 days (discounting the 6 days delay due to closure). and out of those 7 were because of HK post. So I guess we have a new winner. We Canadians always complained about Canada Post, this time they were the fast one! Awesome!! (I eat delicious crow on this one … and that’s fine … lol)

P.S. It would help if the closure date was mentioned during the ordering process. I only found out they were not going to ship until Jan 4th when I sent an inquire email. ( could have split my order and got some parts from Mouser or something had I known this… would have given me something to play with oer the holidays) … oh well.

16 days total. 10 discounting the holiday closure. 6 days out of those 10 taken by HK post to “process” the parcel.

Hope this info helps some other Canuck! eh?