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A few years ago, my company shipped some training software to Canadian Customs and Excise for an upcoming class. We allotted plenty of time and following shipping instructions to the letter, enclosing all necessary declarations and forms. You learn to do this if you want to stay in business.

The day of the class, we received a panicked call from the guys who are putting the class on. No software! We run tracers and it turns out one of their own refused the shipment at the border and that it was on its way back to us.

This was a Fedex shipment, mind you. Many red faces north of the border that day...

I've shipped hundreds of packages to Canada over the last 10 years or so(virtually all of my family is there, and most of my friends), and with maybe 2 exceptions, it has never taken any longer than it would have to ship within the United States.. not sure what holdup your customers have been experience, but either you're doing something wrong(customs forms?) or you're EXTREMELY unlucky(or, of course, I'm EXTREMELY lucky!). Another possible explanation is that the stronger dollar has yielded more customs traffic, and slown down the process in the last few months.. Anything smaller than a couple of books I ship plain USPS, larger than that I go through FedEx.

In my personal experience, I haven't noticed any slowdown in the last few months.. I shipped roughly a dozen and a half packages in December, 2/3 of those to Canada and 1/3 within the states, and they all arrived pretty much in order according to their distance from me. Granted, I've never shipped a tuba across the border(though I've shipped guitars), and probably 75% of my packages going to Canada are going to somebody with the same last name as me.

In general I've noticed a huge improvement in global shipping in the last 5 years. Another country I post regularly to is Australia.. 5 years ago my options were "boat or airmail", Airmail was prohibitively expensive for trivial things(in the $30 range for small packages), and ground mail was 6-12 weeks, and unreliable. Before Christmas I mailed a package from NYC to Adelaide containing a few stuffed animals, lots of pictures, 2 books, and some misc. items.. 2nd week of December. Cost me $11 and arrived in 6 days!(!!!!!) (That, of course, I chalk up to a stroke of luck.. generally 7-10 days is average for smaller packages, 5 days for letters). Additionally, the post office can track exactly where your package is in over 120 countries now, which is might impressive to me. I've been told by somebody I trust that within the next year or so USPS will start offering global tracking to it's customers(the only way now is to go in and ask, and even then they don't have to check for you).

And of course, the ONE time I shipped something express(to Australia) it got held up in Customs and took 3 weeks.

All in all, we're pretty lucky to have the global shipping framework that we do.. to get something like a euphonium from Memphis to Calgary in under 3 weeks is pretty impressive if you ask me!

I recently shipped a euphonium to Canada via USPS and it took 3 weeks to get there. In contrast, I sent a tuba to Canada via freight and it only took four days. Similarly, I fed-exed a trombone and it only took 2 days. I am not sure why, but the problem seems to be due to changing companies at the borded (USPS to the Canadian Post service). Whenever I have been able to use the same shipper for the entire trip, packages seem to get lost less often and and tend to get there a lot quicker.

funkcicle wrote:I've shipped hundreds of packages to Canada over the last 10 years or so(virtually all of my family is there, and most of my friends), and with maybe 2 exceptions, it has never taken any longer than it would have to ship within the United States.. not sure what holdup your customers have been experience, but either you're doing something wrong(customs forms?) or you're EXTREMELY unlucky(or, of course, I'm EXTREMELY lucky!). ............In my personal experience, I haven't noticed any slowdown in the last few months.. .........

I think you are extremely lucky.

Shipping time to Canada has become typically the slowest shipping time frame in the entire world for me and I can be into Ontario in less than three hours of casual driving by car.

I ship parcels internationally at least once a week (often several at a time and to various points at a time) using various shipping options and I can get things to rural towns in Austria or Sweden, out where only the Ghan Railway runs in South Australia or even to Singapore in typically half the time any of my parcels have made it to buyers in Canada. This is however a recent phenomenon though as up until perhaps 2 years ago it was more often similar to shipping across state lines. That is also about the time that the costs using the Post office to Canada became equal to the shipping costs to Europe as well.

funkcicle wrote:I've shipped hundreds of packages to Canada over the last 10 years or so...

What value did you put on the package?

I bought a rebuilt carburetor for my motorhome from a shop near Toronto, and he instructed me to return the core ($150 core charge, by the way) with the following declaration "antique auto parts--no value". Since the old carb was complete toast and at least 32 years old, I thought that declaraction was completely honest.

Had I shipped a new one up to him with an appropriate declaration, it would have been stopped for sure.

Another supplier of motorhome specialty parts (I have an old classic motorhome that I'm renovating) in Canada has just had to close down because shipping was becoming too difficult for him to manage, and he was shipping from Canada to the US. He often takes his inventory with him to a rally in the U.S., and delivers in person.

The shipping services do fine except that they all have to provide a border brokering service, and that adds tremendously to the cost.

So, stuff sent by normal post with no declared value seems to go through pretty quickly. But if the declared value is high enough to require a customs fee or duty, the delay can be severe.

I was once held up at the Toronto airport for an hour because I needed to bring two laptops in. One was set up to test the communications interface on a big highway sign being built in Toronto, and the other was my normal laptop for writing the report. They finally let me through when I told them that the State of Alabama might be compelled to buy the signs from a U.S. maker if it proved impossible for their representatives to perform the require factory acceptance testing. You see, I'm not allowed to work in Canada without a work permit, but I wouldn't tell them I was on vacation (which would make two laptops an unreasonable thing to carry). They eventually decided that I wasn't working in Canada. I was working in Alabama while I happened to be passing thorugh Toronto. Sheesh.

I won't tell the story of going to Japan, at their invitation, to give a presentation about standards stuff.

Rick "who thinks border people are the most humorless people on the planet--even worse than airport security people" Denney

I agree, Rick. On my last trip by air I won the shakedown lottery on every leg. One security fellow told me step to the side as he pulled on rubber gloves. He asked how I was, I said fine but I was a little nervous about the rubber gloves. No reaction!

My experience bears out what some have said, getting stuff shipped from Canada to the US is Slow!

I bought a used video camera tripod from Western Canada, it
took longer than when I had my Boosey & Hawkes G Bass Trombone sent from England, both roughly in the same sized boxes and same weight, both sent "ground" or base level service.

I recently purchased a new Band uniform shirt
from a ebay seller in Canada, I am still waiting for that.