Shipping to Canada is a disaster

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1

Hello Small Business Friends,

Wondering if anyone can assist with solutions for shipping to Canada.

For whatever reason, whenever we ship to Canada, our customers there get assessed extraordinary high import fees. Furthermore, UPS seems to add in their own extraordinarily high fees (that even when broken down do not make much sense). In total, our customers are paying 40% of the purchase price on top of their order.

We have loyal customers, who love our store, but they are constantly frustrated at us for these fees. We have posted on our site in numerous places we cannot control the fees and we do not know why they are so high.

So far we have tried…

  1. We have contacted Shopify, who says these are brokered and there is nothing they can do.

  2. We have contacted UPS and they said there is nothing they can do.

  3. We have begged Shopify to let us purchase (a la carte) a way to include customs duties in the price at checkout (so at least the customer will not have to be surprised by these fees after ordering.) Shopify has refused and told us we must upgrade to a plan that costs 10x a month more than we pay now. The upgraded plan provides us no other benefits (currently) that would constitute this being a good idea for our store (hence our desire to add the feature a la carte, which we would pay for.).

Has anyone else had these issues and is there anyone that has any ideas on how to make this better for the customers? Raising the prices across the board doesn’t make sense as this seems to be localized as a Canadian issue. We have had zero complaints from other countries and based on what I’m seeing, other countries do not charge nearly as much as the Canadians and UPS Canada does.

Cutting off the Canadians also doesn’t seem right as they are 10% of our business.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

2

To optimize shipping costs and accurately calculate import duties, start by negotiating discounted rates directly with UPS or FedEx.

Once you have better rates, make sure you configure the HS Code, Product Description, and Customs Value for each product to ensure accurate import duty calculations.

Next, consider using economical services like UPS Worldwide Economy or FedEx Ground, and look into flat rate boxes like FedEx Pak to save more.

Once everything is set up, adjust your shipping costs by adding a 10-20% markup to cover duties and taxes. This won’t be exact but will give you an approximate shipping cost including duties.

For this process, ensure you have the CCS plan activated on your Shopify account, maintain your own carrier account, and use an app like PH Multi-Carrier Shipping Label to integrate and automate the shipping process.

3

I appreciate this response, but increasing our monthly bills by 10x to incorporate a plan simply for CCS seems not like a very good business decision considering this is only 10% of our business.

Is there any reason why Shopify cannot add a paid plugin that allows for international buyers to pay for their fees up front at checkout? We simply need the fees that Canadians pay to be transparent.

4

Hi Gladfellow,

There are paid apps available on the app store that can help you set up DDP on checkout without upgrading your Shopify plan.

Your shipping carrier will take care of the duties and taxes with the Customs for your Canadian/International customers.

Customer will get to see duties and taxes with shipping cost on checkout and don’t have to pay any duties on deliveries. Keep in mind that you will have to get the HS Code for your products.

You can try EdgeCTP as a one stop solution for you.