Canadian doing business in USA

how to get a USA address and 1800 phone

[jimpoo]

Dear friends,
I'm living in Canada,I'm goint to build an online business, for example gifts store, which will focus on the USA market, so I need an USA address and a 1800 phone for customer service use purpose, the mail and phone call should be forwarded to my real address and phone. Do you have any good solutions for my case?

Thanks!

[moneymancn]

Search for

"1-800 numbers USA"

and

USA Mailing addresses
Virtual Offices USA

Loads out there to take your money
Good luck

MM

[lgn1]

I notice that bank of america has a gift 'VISA' card.
These are credit cards that you preload with money, and
throw away or transfer the balance to a new card (for a fee). Since they are temporary cards, would they pass Address Verification.

Also, I wonder if US companies are getting wise to mail forwarding companies, and blocking them.

I geting worried that the small group of people that are using mail forwarding to commit fraud, may soon be ruining it for people and companies, that want to have an address in the United States, for legimate reasons.

[Rugles]

You are going to need a real US address for returns. Unless you have a fullfillment centre in the states who can handle returns.
You can get 800 numbers that work in both countries by the way, who the heck can tell if an 800 number is in which country. The only thing that will give it away is your hoser accent.

[lgn1]

You don't need a US address for returns. As they will send the package back 'return to sender' to the Canadian address on the package. Most people call for authorization for return goods, anyways, and you can tell them how to send the package back.

You just use the US address, to list on your website, so the americans won't discriminate against you. Actually I think many americans think that canada is a territory of the USA anyways.

Once the customer got their order, they don't really care where the package originally came from, they care about customer service.

I only had a couple of cases of Canada Customs trying to charge me duty on returned goods. I just send the dispute slip (on the back of the customs payment form) with the copy of the original invoice to customs, and they refund all taxes, duties and fees.

[Rugles]

>>>return to sender' to the Canadian address

That won't work with UPS or FedEx or any other courier company. They will charge you a brokerage fee. Brokerage fees you cannot get back and they can often be the whole profit on what is in the package.
Plus your scenerio only works if packages are refused. What about warranty, wrong size, wrong part and all the other reasons for returns after the first date of delivery. It is much easier to arrange for a package to be picked up at the customers address, than have the customer do the work for something that may be our fault.
It is a great advantage to keep at least a small presence in the USA for a Canadian e-commerce operation.

[lgn1]

We use Canada Post ExpressPost and Expedited Commercial Parcels for all our shipments. UPS and FedEx is just to expensive, plus you have to worry about brokerage.

I guess it depends on your business. Our return rate is less than 1%, so returns are still a bit of a pain, but not that big of a deal.