The Canadian Shipping Experience

I didn’t hear of many Canadians’ shipping experience on here, so I thought Id add up how much the X-Carve cost me. Your mileage may vary…

First what did I buy?

Full 1000mm Kit without:
Wasteboard
DeWalt 661 (I just ordered the mount)
Sideboard
Homing Switches
Dust control
Toolkit, clamps and calipers
Software
Endmill kit

I did buy:
The precision kit
two down-cut fishtail bits, as they are hard to find elsewhere ($18+$9)
and the brush for the dust collector for when I get around to printing one ($6)

With free shipping this came to $1070 US or $1400 CN

The first thing to arrive was the Maker slide. The invoice put its value at $230 or so US.
For some reason this was dropped off at my door on a Sunday with no fees.

The rest of the boxes came a week or so later, as they had been stuck in customs. The fees for them were $160 CN.

The drag chain came a few days later through UPS and cost $25. For some reason it was classified a “Toy” with tax of $14 and $10 fee from UPS.

Total for the whole machine (minus $20 waste board and the DeWalt 611 kit I already had) came in under $1600CN.

With shipping it would have broke $2K.

Hope this helps !

were those import fees or actual shipping fees. when i ship things up there from the u.s. the buyer has to pay some sort of import tax which is based on the cost of what the package is worth. i am not from Cnada but that might have been what it was.

Probably a bit of both I think they have a wheel they spin at the border that they go by.

Its hard to plan any purchases from down under, when sometimes you get 40 dollars in fees for something that cost $20, and then they just drop something that cost $500 at your doorstep.

i get it. i think and i am not positive but it should be based on the value of the package. so maybe they did not put a value on something and maybe like the electronica they put a high value on. hard to say.

Something like that. Its a collection of duty and tax.
Every category has a different rule towards it.

I have heard tales of people calling their X-Carve an “engraving machine” at the border and only paying tax.
I wanted to share my experience as an example to anyone who was as curious as I was in the past, but I’m sure its different for everyone.

To add to @RobertCanning note above… if you are close enough to the border to drive, it might be worthy to have it delivered to a ups box and pick it up.

Shipping was originally about 300us… i spent about 40 in gas… a few dollars on tolls to cross the border… 100 cdn on taxes… and took me about 2 hours round trip… i asked that they send it all in one shot.

Wont work for everyone but just another option…

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I was going to mention that as an option too, but couldn’t remember the name of the company Ive used before it was www.kinek.com
I haven’t had reason to drive the 2.5 hours to the border recently.

I cleared my own customs that saves you most costs. As long you get a manifest( detailed packing list) and a carrier that can open up an EB29 on your behalf you can perform the aquittal of the A8A at any CBSA office where you will be required to pay any monies due.

when I bought my 1000MM xcarve last spring, it came to $2000.00 on the site, with exchange and shipping it was $2800. then UPS billed me $125.00 two times (as that the shipment arrived in two parts over two days)

I was over $3000.00 once the dust settled. thankfully I have recouped that cost through sales directly related to the Xcarve, but if you are a person doing this for a hobby, god damn, that’s alot of Cheddar.

DHL in my area will just dump your shit at the end of my driveway and drive off, I have a farm and our driveway is 600 yards from my porch…our local driver loves to toss stuff from the truck and make eye contact with me while he does it

Major bummer! That’s what held me back for almost 2 years.
The upside being you’ve had a machine for years, and
I’ve been creeping the forums and just dreaming.

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Hum. I might have to start making some trips to Canada. :sunglasses:

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Where I am Purolator ships, They won’t give you the packages till you pay the UPS bill at the time of delivery, which is 90% of the time, when you’re not home. Then, I’m not sure what happens, they don’t tell UPS that you paid or something, because I just received a bunch of UPS bills from a debt collector, on top of what i’ve already paid. Trying to get it sorted out.

I’m located near Vancouver, BC, and recently got my first X-carve. Inventables was charging US$269 for shipping, and they were going to ship in multiple shipments as each part was ready. I do a lot of importing for our business so I knew that multiple shipments would be $50+ in brokerage per shipment in addition to the shipping fees, so I was expecting we’d need to pay upwards of $500 in shipping & brokerage.

I emailed Inventables prior to ordering and they said that they could ship ‘complete’ (wait until everything was ready then ship in 1 shipment) if requested, which I did. Also, they claim that they cannot ship UPS Ground to Canada - only expedited (which is 5x the price). So, I got them to ship to a UPS store in Bellingham, about 15 mins over the border from us. I know not all Canadians have that luxury. I also got them to ship on our UPS account so they did, and they refunded me the $269 shipping fee. I haven’t seen the UPS bill yet but it’s going to be roughly CDN$50 for shipping from Inventables to Bellingham. The UPS store charged me a $10 fee to pick it up (which they’re not supposed to do).

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Looks like they are shipping FROM Canada now!
Inventables Canada