Kilts and Customs Duties - An Example

[KiltedPilot]

I'm afraid the fact is that we pretty much refuse to send anything of value into Canada that way now, since the rate of 'loss' got to quite ridiculous levels.

Interesting experience Nick.

I was born in UK, and moved from UK to Canada a handful of years ago. I still have a lot of family in UK, sending letters, cards, presents. I have multiple bank accounts and credit cards etc in the UK. I continue to shop online at some of my favourite UK stores.

Thus, over the past few years, we've probably received over 1,000 letters from the UK, and 100-150 parcels. Never has one disappeared, or even been particularly late. Delivery time for Royal Mail/Canada Post parcels is from 2 days to 10 days, and about 6 days typical.

I also receive a lot of parcels via Canada Post from Japan, US, and Europe. None has gone missing.

As briefly mentioned in the other thread, when in the UK (and for a while afterwards), I used to run a small mail order business that sent 8,000 to 20,000 parcels from UK to North America per year. Canada Post never gave me the slightest problem. Rarely did USPS outright fail to deliver, but occasionally parcels took an unusually long time.

Hence your experience seems surprising to me. You might want to request information from the large membership of this forum to see if your company experience is repeated, or something related to your local Royal Mail facilities, etc.

I fully agree with you that there are many tradeoffs between delivery methods -- I often prefer FedEx for my business needs. Different factors favour different shipping methods. My only debate with you is that import costs ARE a manageable factor as well, and a huge one -- something you appeared to dispute.

Mike