Paypal/ShipStation USA to Canada

I printed today for the first time with Shipstation an international label (Canada).
Unlike before, where the printed address was directly to the buyer, it is now via a processing facility

From Shipstation Site: "All customs forms are sent electronically - no more Customs Forms to print! Your parcel will be routed to our nearest Postal Processing Facility where all needed Customs Forms will be printed, and then sent on to your International Recipient"

I am assuming it will be OK, but was really not prepared for it... Anyone has prior experience doing it that way ?

Comments

  • 3 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • As a Canadian, I've never seen this on the receiving end. Which carrier is this with? I'm assuming USPS? The only time I've seen this kind of system is with eBay and their Global Shipping Program but that's very different. It sounds like they're doing a consolidation type of service perhaps to get better savings for you, but if it's just a plain ol' USPS option, I'm really at a loss as to what this is.

    Also, beware of a potentially unhappy customer, especially for small $ orders. If an order comes in via a brokerage service of almost any kind (which it sounds like it will), these places will tack on a minimum fee usually of $10-15, even when only like $1 of tax is owed on import. If they were expecting it to come via USPS and being handed to Canada Post (where usually CBSA doesn't even care/bother about taxing a lot of the smaller orders), then this will possibly be an issue.
  • Digging into this a bit more... so I see documentation from ShipStation talking about starting in Aug 2019, Stamps.com (which it appears is integrated with ShipStation), started using a Global Advantage Program (a bit like what I was explaining about eBay) as a type of consolidation. It sounds like the PayPal integration with ShipStation is leveraging this. https://help.shipstation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360026158071-Global-Advantage-Program#smartsaver-0-1 Hopefully this page can give a bit more info for you and see if it's applicable.

    I once received a book that I ordered from a marketplace from the UK last year where it came through as Canada Post but with a COD charge (not an import charge). I noticed it went through a type of consolidation and the worst part of this is that you can't even see what the breakdown of what the actual tax is vs the brokerage fee because they lump it in as a COD from the consolidator (but I knew that most of the COD was a tacked on fee since the book was very cheap, and the fee was almost as much as the book). I paid it (not happily though, because there's no warning that they're going to use a program like that), and perhaps it's something similar. I haven't seen anything come in from the US like that yet though.
  • @Emporiosa thanks, I assumed it was similar with eBay Global Shipping Program.
    I will see how that goes. With eBay the buyer is aware of all the fees upfront.
    If this doesn't workout, I will print my labels from USPS.com in the future for international shipments.
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