I was expecting a brokerage fee, but this is entirely ridiculous.

Ordered a RotaryCompressionTester.Com tester. USD$250 value
C$83.96 in brokerage fees!
Absolutely disgusting. I've never paid this much for brokerage fees, even on thousand dollar plus orders from Japan.

This is absolutely not RCP's fault, but this option should never be offered or chosen for US to Canada shipments.

Spend $10 more on DHL and save $50 on brokerage.

 

Yah, UPS is ****. Usually best to use a cross border shipping service.

thewird

 

I normally do, but this was the only thing I needed and it's about $9 for the bridge both ways and $7 for the package.
Usually brokerage is $20-25 so it was worth the extra to save a 2 hour drive.
Ah well. Win some, lose some.

 

+1 on avoid UPS at all costs.

 

DHL Charged me $40 admin fees on the last package I had brought up from the us. Total package value, including duties was $150.

USPS and Canada Post are the best ways to reduce these fees from my experience.

 

Rightly or wrongly UPS collected about $39 of various government fees on a recent shipment. "Other fees" may well have been countervaling duties. The bill was not specific.


(it was on a used compression tester coming from the US.)

 

~$200 CAD for the item I purchased, 13% sales tax, 41% (!!!!) in UPS brokerage charges.

And the really sad thing is I paid it, because for me to take the time to go to the nearest CBSA office and self-clear would cost me more in gasoline and time than the $85.

 

UPS is just horrible to deal with all around. Currently dealing with them for a shipment from Atkins. Someone at UPS marked the shipment as "Return to sender requested by receiver" after I requested the clearance paperwork (LVS form).
I got the LVS, paid the taxes, sent it in, and they confirmed it. I checked the tracking and see that it's on it's way back to Atkins. Both myself and Dan at Atkins have been trying to get them to fix it since Wednesday last week and getting nowhere.
As a note, I of course told UPS that I did not request that and asked them to just look at who did request it. The person on the phone said "oh! Ok I can do that... Oh that's odd, there's no one filled in for it. There should be a name but there isn't one". Still wouldn't do anything.

As for brokerage fees, FedEx has the lowest I've seen. They charge a flat $10 for it.

 

The way UPS present the charges can be confusing. They don't really show that they are providing breakdowns of the fees, etc..It rather looks like a list of separate fees.