Online Pool Stores

Jump to latest Follow Reply
P

pooladdict

0
TFP Guide
In The Industry
May 14, 2007
797
New Brunswick Canada
Hello All

Just wondering if any of you have a favorite online store that you trust and have gotten good treatment from. Up here in Canada its very tough to order anything online without having to make the shipper jump through hoops to get it to us.

I am thinking of opening up an online site myself, for us Canucks, just curious if anyone on this forum would be interested in an affiliate up in Canada. I have been a manufacturers agent for over 20 years, selling from sporting goods to clothing, OTC and Cosmetics so I am pretty confident I could handle it.

Anything you could add would be helpfull.

Rik
 
um.. " H " "E" "double-hockey-sticks" Yeah!

There are a couple of Canadian online retaillers... one in Alberta that I like a lot, but shipping to NS is a p.i.t.a.

intheswim is pretty good, but you can't get chemicals cross border.
and duty taxes, and brokerage fees are a b*tch.

btw, I am always on the look out for large bags of sodium bicarbonate. My pool store ran out and the bulk food stores have extra baking ingrediants :roll:

best of luck to you and let me know when you get your website up & running
 
We have been trying to find a way to ship to Canada without causing our customers problems with customs issues and customs costs. We don't want to just send something and then have the customer not be happy with the shipping process, this is not the way we do business. If anyone from Canada has any suggestions for us please let me know, I'd love to hear them.
 
JoshU said:
We have been trying to find a way to ship to Canada without causing our customers problems with customs issues and customs costs. We don't want to just send something and then have the customer not be happy with the shipping process, this is not the way we do business. If anyone from Canada has any suggestions for us please let me know, I'd love to hear them.
Click to expand...
Well for one thing never use "UPS Standard to Canada" for shipping to Canada, your customers will be hit with excessive brokerage (and other) fees from UPS. "UPS Worldwide Expedited" , the next class of service (much more expensive), does not have these additional fees. I think FedEx plays the same game.

A recent example: I've ordered some reagents from ProTeam, they shipped it UPS Standard, a $CDN 63 value and UPS wanted $CDN 35 in fees to clear it. I cleared it through customs myself and saved a bunch of money that way. Not everybody is into clearing parcels at customs, not everybody knows they can do this. (Fun Fact: Customs had the parcel marked as 'hazmat', the UPS guy almost didn't let me open the thing on the counter, I had to tell him it was 'limited quantity').

There's a class-action suit being brought upon UPS and FedEx in Canada for unfair practices, but I disgress.

I've always had excellent results from people in the US sending stuff to me via USPS "Priority Mail" or "Express Mail". I would say about 80% of the parcels show up on my doorstep within 7 days and zero duties and taxes. What happens with the other 20% is that the declared value is converted to $CAN and the taxes are calculated on that amount, plus a $5 handling fee from Canada Post. This is reasonable, and it doesn't affect the "buying experience" as a shipment from UPS does.

From a seller's point of view it's more convinient to have the big brown truck show up and pick up parcels than it is waiting in line at the post office to get stuff weighed. I think though the US sellers can use PayPal (or USPS?) to fill out all the paperwork (very little) and pre-pay the parcel prior to dropping it off at the post office.

It's gotten to a point though that I avoid eBay sellers that only ship UPS.

Using UPS to send within Canada is fine though.
 
Good news, anyone can do postage online USPS, print it out and they will pick up packages for free if you pre-arrange by calling them beforehand. A postage scale is required for some things but there is also the one-rate boxes that you can stuff almost anything into up to about 70#. There may be some limitations but basically thats it. I live 14 miles from town so hate the idea of waiting in a post office for anything.

I'm betting that the post office would do pick up of packages for businesses as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply