Shipping to Canada

Ack, no. This kind of false declaration to try and save the recipient money often backfires. The Customs agents see all the "clever" tricks all day, every day. "Gifts" that are obviously not gifts, expensive stuff declared at "$9.99" (sort of like "Two beers, officer"; it's the lie everyone always tells). There's nothing Canada Customs can do to the sender 'cause he's in a foreign country, but they can and do levy charges on the package for the recipient. Not every package, not every time, but often enough to make this kind of effort a gamble not worth making. I bought an antique radio on eBay; the seller marked it "gift" and "$9.99". Customs opened the box, saw this beautiful antique radio, and withheld the package pending valuation. They contacted me and had me send in proof of its value before they would release it. I sent a printout of the auction page showing the final price as $62 and then they released the package.

The best practice I've found is to have the seller/sender (whether that's you in the states or you're talking to him/her in the States from Canada) declare the item at its lowest plausible, real value. For example, if the seller bought a fuel pump for $12 and sold it to me for $27.95, then what is the value of the pump? It's both of those figures, and if the seller declares it at $12 then that's still a valid value for the contents. Of course, if the seller declares it at $12 and encloses a receipt for my $27.95, that's, um, not as good. Also be careful with insurance. If you declare a package at, say, $40, then either you will not be allowed to insure it above that level, or you will be allowed but doing so will create a giant red flag pointing to attempted false declaration, or in the event an insurance claim is filed the max payout you'll get is $40, not the higher figure you insured it for.

The main thing is never to use UPS to ship from the States to Canada. They have a real racket going on with their bogus (grossly inflated) "brokerage fees", and there are class-action lawsuits against UPS in at least two provinces for that reason. Canada Post charges $5 for brokerage of parcels sent by regular mail, $8 for brokerage of parcels sent by express mail. And often they don't even charge that. UPS, on the other hand…well, in 2004 or so I bought an old car magazine on eBay. Bid end price was $3.25 or something like that. The seller put it in a UPS envelope instead of mailing it, for some reason; UPS held that magazine hostage for $40 in "brokerage fees". :roll:

FedEx brokerage charges are higher than postal, but much lower than UPS.