Ordering from Canada shipping to US?

[bober]

Hi,

I'm planning to buy skates through your website, given outstanding pricing you have. There is, however, one trick: if I ask you to ship to Canada I'll incure very high customs fees Fedex, UPS, etc. like to charge, which makes purchase through your website almost meaningless. (I do have multiple bad experiences with them where I had to pay customs fees equal or higher the value of item I bought). Can I pay you guys with my Canadian credit card and have skates ship to US? I went through your shipping policy and notice that for the first time purchase you'd like to have shipping address the same as billing, however, there is a note that there might be some exclusions to it. Would it work in this case? I'd really appreciate if we can work out shipping to US. Please advice.

TIA

[IW Staff]

First - let me say it is possible. Let me first explain why we ask this, and then some options for you.

We prefer that for first time customers, billing and shipping addresses match. We bend this rule often as it can and will cause inconvenience for gifts and various other situations.

The reason is credit card fraud. Unfortunately, it is part of our life. If someone stole your wallet, they would use your billing information, have your security code from the back... but would ship somewhere else. For repeat customers we don't flinch. But if a first time, you can see how it can look fraudulent and we owe it ourselves as well as the cardholder to have some security there.

If billing international and shipping domestic, it is even tougher. Shipping to hotels is even tougher. Hotel staff steal credit info and have all the information as well. Inline Warehouse gets left holding the bag on all the fraud orders, so it is unfortunate for the honest customer which is 98% of the business , that criminals can make life hard them.

We can and will ship to different addresses if we can get a comfort level with it. It is a case by case basis and may depend on the size of the order.

COD (money order) at time of delivery is one way to bypass this. Simply pay with a money order at time of delivery and you can have it shipped wherever you like. This is a good way to establish customer history as well so that you can use a credit card the next time around and have different billing and shipping addresses. Mail a money order in and we'll ship anyhwere. Just order by phone first so we reserve the products. Call us and explain why one of those wouldn't work for you, and we may let it go anyway. Unfortunately, we've gotten many stories that turned out to be just that. Stories. People coming up with stuff so we ship only to learn it is fraud and we get burned. Please don't take offense if we insist on COD or something like that. We are only trying to protect you the cardholder as well as ourselves so that we can keep our prices down.

Thanks for the post !

Stan @ IW

[Alexo]

Hmmm...

I ordered a set of wheels online, paid by a Canadian credit card, shipped to a US address, no problem. Maybe I lucked out but it was my first purchase here and it went smoothly.

Regarding shipping to Canada, UPS is the worst, they will gleefully screw you over for "customs clearance" while holding your package hostage (or sometimes will just quietly bill you after the fact). FedEx is not much better.

The best option would be if IW used BorderFree (http://www.borderfree.com). Unfortunately, not many shops do.

The second best option would be to ship it via USPS. Sure, it may take longer to arrive and you'll still pay GST (and PST in Ontario) but that's it.
I really urge IW to consider shipping USPS to Canada, the saving on the fees alone will make it cheaper to order from you than your competitors.

Another possibility is to arrange with UPS/FedEx that the customer will clear the item through customs him/herself. It involves a little paperwork on the part of the shipping party and some legwork on the part of the receiver but it ends up being cheaper.
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[IW Staff]

In regards to UPS "screwing you" on customs as the previous post mentioned, we do not use UPS for international shipments.

All Express delivery (2day, 3day, Next Day) and International shipments go via FedEx. We use UPS for domestic ground service only.

As I mentioned, the policy is there to help prevent from credit card fraud. If we look at an order, we can sometimes see enough things that we may feel comfortable letting go. First time or not. If a large order, we may be more strict. Once customer history is established, we allow you to ship wherever you like. There are just too many cases these days of people stealing others credit information. They have the billing info so it is hard to detect. It makes it harder for those customers that are honest, but we owe it to our honest customers to protect them fraud as well.

Thanks for understanding!