I find when I mailorder from the US, if it is shipped by USPS there is a 50/50 chance of having taxes collected on the package. So it's pretty cost effective to just take your chances having it mailed. I've had led kits arrive tax free, and most recently the $400 tron ramp mod showed up tax free.

PBL will ship USPS. I've never ordered from Marco, but yeah, I would never use UPS or Fedex because you get nailed for sure.

Marco is now shipping with USPS to canada , but still too high ..

I'm in on the spring run!

You guys outside the Atlantic provinces have it good on taxes, don't ya? Only the GST?

I always get nailed for the HST (since we combined both taxes), 15%. Ugh.

Have you thought of using a service like this:

http://shiptotheborder.com/

I'm not endorsing the company but I know of people that use a similar service here on the West Coast.

I have the luxury of living 15 minutes from the border and they have 4 shipping/package places all within minutes of getting into the US. I get all my packages sent there, saves on freight and most times they just wave me through if it is less then $100. Now if I good just figure out a way to avoid the "are these commercial use, nobody has a pinball machine at home" questions and the "so you must be a pinball wizard" jokes.

We have 13% HST in Ontario. But my strategy with regular mail works, a lot of packages show up tax free just sitting there.

There is never duty, and taxes are the same no matter what. Shipping is the only additional, and I guess depending on your time, gas and other things, it may or may not be worth it.

I'm interested to learn how you could have had almost $400 in shipping costs. LED's are nothing no matter how many, I once bought 20 games worth, and it all fit in a smaller box than most usual parts orders. Did you order a lot of heavy/large items?

I could see it being expensive if you were ordering a lot of rails, legs and stuff like that.

Of all the items (includes car parts, audio/video equipment, etc) that I have ordered I have maybe only paid taxes on 5% of the items. Pinball Life and the rest will all ship USPS. If you want to chance it without a tracking number, the shipping is a lot cheaper - but then you take the risk if it goes missing no recourse. Most of the pinball places ship with tracking, but Pinball Bulbs and Pinball Resource will ship regular (a lot of the arcade shops will send regular as well).

I live too far from the border to make it worth my while to make the drive (5 hours 1 way). We just need to get together around my area and all put in a big order and share the shipping cost.

What! You don't carry pictures of your pins in your wallet?

Its the brokerage fees that kill us. Your right, no duty and for me in Alberta, 5% federal tax. The problem is the shipping company, UPS is an outright total scam, they actually change brokerage fees depending on declared value! Same paperwork, same guy doing it, yet its more on a $100 package then a $50 package?!?!?

As a previous poster stated, USPS is your best option, I buy at least 1 item a day from Ebay and I would say maybe 5-10% of the time I get charged taxes. Usually, it just ends up in my mailbox with full declared value on the package.

I sold some arcade boards to a guy in Canada. The shipping address was in Maine. It's crazy how bad it is, but people living close to the border can just have their stuff shipped to a friend just a few miles down in the states and avoid all the unnecessary costs.

UPS is the only that forces brokerage fees, Fedex and USPS do not, and taxes (which can be hit and miss) are our side, and nothing to do with the shipper or shipping service.

NEVER use UPS, that's Canada pinbll parts 101.

I see, the multiple locations is what I was missing. I guess if you are close enough, how far is the drive for you?

I'm only an hour from Port Huron, Michigan, but I'm too lazy to do anything like this.

Good information in this thread. Thanks for sharing.

Brokerage is killer I bought a personalized iphone Case for 25$. Ended up as 70 $ at the door. CRAZY!

It's pretty bad, no doubt about it. A $35 order from Marcos turns into a $60 order or worse if I don't feel like gambling and prepay duties and taxes. Hell, if I want the part in under 5 days it turns into a $120 order!

I hadn't really entertained the idea of gambling and not pre-paying duty and taxes. I see no reason why I should get dinged for any of that just because it's coming from Marcos. I've had tons of stuff shipped from the states to me and paid at MOST like a $5 shipping flat rate and had absolutely no problem with it.

I might give that a shot, their cheapest option is still $14 in shipping + whatever I end up paying once it arrives, but I guess that's one option. I'd just need to make sure I order a bunch of stuff at once instead of doing it piecemeal or the shipping ends up doubling the cost of my order. Boo!

We ship stuff to my husband's friend's house in Cleveland ahead of each Ohio pinball show. My husband then travels down there for the show with an extra bag and can bring back up to $850 worth of stuff duy free.

I have considered going - but will admit that I'm scared off by the reports of extremely bad b.o., overflowing bathrooms and (pee?) stained jogging pants that haven't been washed in months.

That's pretty standard for just about every type of hobby trade show to be honest... I wish I was kidding.

It's

That's what I hear. One of these days I'll just have to suck it up and go.

I understand not showering when there's no shower. I've gone a week / close to a week a few times without showering out of necessity (sea kayaing in remote regions, multi-day hikes in unpopulated places).

What I don't understand is not showering when there is a shower.

The Ohio show is the worst and, sadly, the description is accurate.

Allentown is a fantastic show and the facilities are dynamite. Right across the street is the farmer's market. If you haven't gone to a show, I highly recommend Allentown as the first show.

Cheers,
Duane

Welcome to pinball... what you wash your jogging pants? I think you are missing the point of jogging pants...

For those in the GTA and not a big rush, Starbust/Playdium will order from Marco and PBR with a bit of a mark-up. Contact them for pricing to see if it's worth it.

Pretty sure it's only us Albertans and the Territories that are exempt from HST/PST

Ah, right you are. Here's a link that may be helpful for future reference (for canucks in general)

http://www.dutycalculator.com/country-guides/Import-duty-taxes-when-importing-into-Canada/

We get totally F'd on shipping so I'll probably be in on the Spring order with you but the Allentown show is in May so we'll see...

Shows are usually where I stock up on all parts.

About a year or two ago USPS jacked international shipping rates. Maybe their reasoning was to keep domestic shipping low and in turn the voters happy (cheap ship within USA) but screw the foreigners to help fund budget deficits. Makes sense to me for them to do that. Canada Post probably did something to screw the outsiders too although Canada Post can be a joke sometimes like not being able to ship a fishing rod I had wrapped in a solid tube because their computer system wouldn't accept the dims to the mailman leaving a polk sub 10 houses up the street earlier this week and they even left it on the guy;s doorstep and drove away!!! Luckily good neighbour came by and dropped it off to fix their screw up.

I tried something new this week. I reached out to Starburst because they have an Ottawa "Regent" office since they took over all their routes. I had parts shipped to that office with their other shipments so the cost to me for shipping was $7 and no brokerage. Downside is the parts cost more and you automatically get hit with HST. I need to figure out what the price difference would have been vs. a us supplier but it's something to think about especially for small orders for heavy orders like legs. In this case I had a set of Bally SS legs on the order so I probably saved. Need to confirm that.

the nice thing about getting starburst to order parts is when it is just some small stuff. I had them special order 5 retro leds from cointaker for me, just had to pay for the 5 leds + tax. Normally I would have ordered far more from cointaker to make it worth it.