I completed a deal with a nice guy in Canada a few months ago, but I won't ship to Canada again despite the positive experience. The shipping hassle was too much.
Originally, the plan was for me to send the package FEDEX Ground from Los Angeles to Quebec. Lucky for me, FEDEX seemed incapable or more so, unwilling to acommodate me.
I went to a major FEDEX hub near my house and they said I needed to open a separate FEDEX Ground account since my regular FEDEX account wouldn't get the job done. Apparently, these are two separate and distinct arms which don't like deaking with each other. This depot also told me that the person in charge of Ground shipments wasn't there and they couldn't handle it immediately.
I went home and tried to find contact info on the FEDEX website, but I'll be damned if they want anyone to contact them. It's hard as hell to find contact info on the FEDEX website. Almost as bad as Ebay.
When I finally found a number and got someone on the phone, they recommended two places where I could ship FEDEX Ground. At one place it was required that all forms already be printed out before arriving there since they were a business oriented depot. So no dice. The second place the lady on the line recommended to me was the very place I had just returned from! After I told her they weren't readily set up to handle FEDEX Ground shipments there was a long silent pause on her end of the line, followed by, "really?"
The lady said she could prepare the forms for me and FAX them to me, but I don't own a FAX machine. Then she offered to FAX them to the place I had just been, but that would do no good since the lady at the FEDEX depot told me the person handling Ground shipments wasn't there and they didn't know when she would be in.
When I contacted the buyer in Canada he researched his e-mail and found that when encountering difficulty with sales from the US he always resorted to USPS. Only thing is, USPS doesn't offer ground service from LA to Quebec. Only air or by SHIP! And no tracking info was available for purchase for SHIP. Only via air! I had a choice between $28 for ocean service or almost $100 for air, and since the guy had already sent payment via PayPal, I decided to risk sending him the box by pirate ship. USPS told me shipment would take 4-6 weeks.
When I contacted the seller, he wasn't surprised at all, and not unsatisfied with the 4-6 week expectation. He said shipments from the US typically took 3-4 weeks. So I waved goodbye as my package went off to Quebec via Louis & Clark barge and hoped for the best.
Three weeks later, I received an e-mail that the package arrived safely. I really lucked out on this deal, and if it wasn't for this nice buyer things could have been a real mess.
It's easy to get things from Canada into the US, but just plain epic going the other way. That and in order to avoid monstrous import "doodies", one can't place a declared value higher than $100 on the item or our friends north of the border will get a giant North American pine cone up the yin/yang.
No more for me.
