anybody order from year one ?????

When I ordered all my parts for my car this past fall (4 different vendors all located in the US) I always made my orders over the phone (quoting the part #'s off their website). One of the first questions I always asked was if they could ship USPS instead of UPS. For each item I wanted to order I always asked if it was in stock, if it wasn't, I would not order it from them. UPS packages will always get tagged with brokerage fees that are insane as you found out. USPS pacakges, if tagged by Canada Post with borkerage fees, is always a flat $5CDN and then GST & PST on the value of the item.

Even on parts I buy off e-bay I always request the seller send via USPS instead of UPS. I've probably had about 25 packages come from stores or off e-bay and probably 50% of them were tagged with the $5 plus GST & PST. The other 50% came thru without needing to pay brokerage or taxes.

Stay away from having things shipped via UPS since you're going to get hosed on brokerage.... and you can't argue with them since they will return it.

Now you know how UPS can afford to always have clean, polished trucks with employees who wear UPS logo'd socks, hats and probably underwear. Those insane brokerage fees pay for all that bling!