Any chance y’all would be open to offering shipping via UPS? I don’t know how it is in other parts of the US, but FedEx is often late/delayed/misses delivery windows here while UPS is consistently on time and with a smile. UPS is also unionized with better pay & working conditions as I understand it. I’d happily pay a premium just to know that packages will be delivered on time by my buddy Chuck!
I totally understand if this is a no-go, I know firsthand that logistics are never as easy as they seem.
@liberationfab We offer FedEx and USPS because of the reliability of our local services. While you may love your UPS driver, our local UPS driver and warehouse are horrible. They’ve lost packages and given us a hard time about trying to recover funds for lost packages.
If you want to use your UPS rates and service, send me an email with your parts numbers and quantities. I’ll create an invoice to pay, then send you the box dimensions. All you’ll need to do is send me the label and request a pick up.
That’s great to know, thank you for sharing! It stinks that service in one part of the country can be so different than the other, but I imagine running an international logistics company isn’t the easiest thing
I’ll give that a try next time I order, thanks for being accommodating!
Any chance you will consider adding USPS options for those shipping Canada? The only options I see available today are FedEx and DHL which usually tack on unpredictable brokerage fees that those companies are not very transparent about. It’s much more predictable with the USPS > Canada Post shipping in my experience.
Ugh. Ever tried ordering from Rene Herse Cycles by USPS? Last three orders - average delivery time to Canada (Nova Scotia, specifically) one month! Order placed: two days later order shipped from Seattle. A week in transit to LA - sits in LA facility for a week to 10 days. Then off to Atlanta by ground, sits there for another week. Last order then went to Miami - a thousand km in the wrong direction, sits there for four days, then despatched to Toronto where it sits in customs for nearly a week - then three days to Halifax. Yes, it arrived with a brokerage charge of $9.95, plus the GST for its value ( which I claim back so that’s a wash). Don’t be in a hurry with USPS, jeez.
Sorry your experience has been that bad. I generally have pretty good luck but might be improved from a speed perspective due to being in the Toronto area. I just appreciate the predictability of USPS/Canada post from a cost standpoint. FedEx and UPS don’t seem to be very transparent and there are varying levels of service built into their different offerings but it’s hard to keep track of.
(Keeping my original message here but started a new thread because of this is a new topic - Coco)
USPS (United States Postal Service) contracts out the international shipping. Packages will get trucked to the partner location via USPS. Once it enters the gate, it’s under the control of the 3rd party contractor even though the USPS tracking number remains the same. The cargo is held until the truck or plane is full enough for a certain destination.
We’ve stopped shipping internationally via USPS because of the slow shipping times, unreliability, and poor/zero customer service. FedEx International Ground service has the best delivery service from US to Canada. Although the shipping cost isn’t expensive, FedEx sends an invoice to the importer after delivery for taxes and fees. It’s always surprising to me how much they charge. On the other hand, DHL is very expensive to send internationally but I don’t know if they send an invoice for taxes and fees like FedEx does.
I live in Australia and run an importing busines and have purcahsed a LOT of bikes/bike parts over the years. At least 100 international orders (both personal orders and business ones). I have the most experience with DHL, USPS and UPS. DHL is the most expensive when ordering from small businesnes but very fast and you get a lot of updates. There seem to be a few larger businesses (Bike24, BikeComponents, BlueLug) that have DHL accounts and they get better pricing. USPS is cheap and great for orders under a couple hunder US$ which is as much as I ever ordered from companies like Paragon or PaulComp etc. Yes it’s slow and rarely updated but I’m yet to have a package go missing. UPS seems to split the difference between the two. I think I’ve recived one FedEx package and it was by far the most I’ve paid. And I had an issue with their delivery window and eventually had to collect my order from their depot. I would avoid using them again.
Also some boring tax stuff that may be of relevance. When selling to Australia, if an overseas business has a turnover of more than AU$75,000 (∼US$50,000) then they’re supposed to register for and collect 10% GST (Australian Sales Tax) and pay it to the Australian Government. It seems like a few European companies do this but I’m yet to see any US company (outside of eBay or Amazon) charge GST at checkout. If these orders are delivered by AusPost then this GST rarely gets picked up. For any orders I recieve via freight I definiely have to pay tax and duties before they clear customs.
$73.11 USD to PMW for the parts
$17.47 USD in shipping
$35.50 USD in extra taxes (only $9.23 of that is actual Canadian taxes)
Brutal. FWIW, I probably would not order to Canada from PMW again if I have to deal with FedEx. Will order if I am traveling to the US, but not direct to Canada again. FedEx are a bunch of crooks.
