Shipping fee problems

[alnany]

Hi everyone:

We are having problems with international shipping fees. We use the UPS calculator and shipping fees to places like Canada and Australia is as high as $70 - $100 for t-shirts that cost less than $30. For example, the following address costs $98.02:

#### Amazon Dr.
Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, V3B7Z8
Canada

Is this normal? Any advice is appreciated.

Best,
Chris

[edited by: lorax at 11:28 am (utc) on Aug. 22, 2006]
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[sja65]

The stock international rates for UPS, FedEx and DHL are all very high, but it is easy to get them to agree to large discounts on international (50% to 65% off published rates) even if you are only doing a couple packages a day. They still won't be able to be as inexpensive as USPS, but they are a lot more reliable and faster.

[BananaFish]

We use USPS for international shipments. However, after losing a package, the Post Office told us that Global Priority mail cannot be tracked, and recommended using Global Express Mail. While not as high as UPS and the like, it's still about $20 to send a 2 lb item to Canada.

[stajer]

Be aware that the UPS and FEDEX rate calculators for international shipments INCLUDE applicable taxes for the destination country. Depending on the goods you are shipping, the tax rates can be significant.

[Rugles]

Shipping textiles from Canada to the US, and from the US to Canada are subject to tariffs. Despite Free Trade (its not free, do not let anyone tell you that we have free trade) textiles are subject to tariffs in the 20% range.

We gave up on shipping some textiles to the US more than a year ago. We do still have some things that classify as textiles but we worked the tariff into the cost.

[ispy]

If the customer does not have their own import broker I think UPS charges a brokerage fee which can be $70-$100 (I think) over and above the shipping rates for their service of collecting the import taxes from the customer (they charge the customer this on their doorstep).