Comment by CosmicShadow

Comment by CosmicShadow 14 hours ago

I sell a niche, handmade product for a living from Canada and 90% of my sales are to the US and this bullshit really fucking sucks. Even our shipping partners don't know what is going on and usually can only fill us in on or after a due date goes past because nobody on either side of the border has any idea what to do or what is actually supposed to happen.

Here's the stupidity: USPS doesn't know who is supposed to collect the tariffs...hmm it's the person in the US who bought the product, and you collect money from them, like UPS and FedEx do all the time. It's going to your own government, how do they not understand? I know it's unrealistic for mail carriers to be able to do that en-masse now, but I'm not sure why they think Canada Post should be collecting tariffs, they don't have employees that deliver mail...IN THE US! So we can't ship with Canada Post to the US now as they'll just send it back. Canada Post can also strike again at any moment, but that's another story.

So the current advice is for us to now ship our products as Delivery Duty Paid or DDP, which means I'm supposed to pay the tariff that the buyer should be paying all because USPS doesn't know how to collect the money to give to their government. I'm getting double boned.

Oh yeah, I also have to pay an extra $2 per shipment to a broker now in addition to the tariffs, which nobody really has any clarity what they will be yet and there doesn't seem to be a good source saying if the items I sell are CUSMA or not.

It's one hell of a mess for sure, and especially damaging when you sell low ticket items on volume. I'm going to have to jack my shipping, which will hurt as our shipping is already more expensive than what someone would normally pay from someone within the US.

Once we can ship Delivery Duty Unpaid or DDU we will expect 4 out 5 customers to send angry emails asking what these "Hidden fees" are as we don't expect anyone to realize they actually need to pay tariffs and then we get stuck on the defensive side educating people what tariffs are and who caused them and who is supposed to pay them, which is not great for business, sanity or time :/

bdcravens 13 hours ago

> Once we can ship Delivery Duty Unpaid or DDU we will expect 4 out 5 customers to send angry emails asking what these "Hidden fees" are as we don't expect anyone to realize they actually need to pay tariffs and then we get stuck on the defensive side educating people what tariffs are and who caused them and who is supposed to pay them, which is not great for business, sanity or time :/

Can you get ahead of this by putting a message on your checkout page when the recipient is in the US? Won't stop all of the complaints of course.

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CosmicShadow an hour ago

You, good sir, have made the mistake of thinking people can and will read!
We've put warnings for things on every single page, step of the checkout, and emails, and people still complain that things are a surprise, even after checking a box acknowledging the facts :(
The sad fact you learn after shipping 10k+ orders is that you can't prevent issues by preparing and telling people about them. It really sucks and defies all logic.

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Scoundreller 14 hours ago

If they're not individualized items, send US$800 worth everyday for the next week to an Amerifriend to warehouse there and re-ship domestic on-demand if you can.

That's basically what US companies were doing with Chinese stuff when those tariffs were announced but not in force yet (and maybe earlier if they got early wind about it).

Dunno what's going on with NAFTA/CUSMA/USMCA. Changes with the wind. Or maybe you'll qualify for duty-free under our supposed trade agreement if you pay some assessor mafia $9999 to confirm that your handmade good is Made in Canada.

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CosmicShadow an hour ago

Unfortunately we make custom items. We'd have to move our actual operations to the US to really get ahead of the game, but I don't want the nightmare of having to hire someone and do business from within the US, especially if something goes wrong. Maybe if we were 5-10x the size I could afford it, but not at this moment.

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- latchkey an hour ago
  
  > We'd have to move our actual operations to the US to really get ahead of the game
  It's almost as if this is exactly what the tariffs were designed to accomplish.
  (I'm not saying I agree with the situation, but this is the hard reality of it.)
  
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0xDEAFBEAD 6 hours ago

>I'm going to have to jack my shipping, which will hurt as our shipping is already more expensive than what someone would normally pay from someone within the US.

That's the intention of the tariffs, correct? To create a cost advantage for US businesses against foreign competition.

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ceejayoz 6 hours ago

They'd have to be much, much higher (and much, much less fickle - we've already had a bunch of pauses and revisions and random changes so far) for that to really work.
10-100% tariffs on Chinese-made goods still means those Chinese-made goods are dramatically cheaper than made-in-the-USA versions in most cases.

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fnordpiglet 13 hours ago

You’re missing that Trump has declared you pay the tariffs, which while contradictory to reality, must be simultaneously true and not true as he brooks no dissent. Therefore the USPS is frozen and trapped in the conundrum that is US politics.

If it makes you feel any better it’s worse for Americans having to live through this stuff. It’s going to be a long three and a half years.

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macintux 13 hours ago

It’ll be a lot longer before things recover. If they ever do. The damage is tremendous, and only getting started.

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bushbaba 12 hours ago

90% number checks out as Canada is ~1/10th the population of the US.

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CosmicShadow an hour ago

I also don't bother advertising to Canada anymore as it's just more valuable for me to sell to the US in USD. I've spent a lot of time working on getting shipping as cheap as possible to make it alluring for the US and it currently is cheaper for me to send to California from near Toronto then it is to send something in my own city, let alone anywhere else in Canada. It is getting better here with these new cheap providers like Intelcom, but it's still not worth it when dealing with 10x the people paying me in a currency that's 1.38x mine.
I also sell something that has a max value people would be willing to pay, so if that number is $6, then I'd rather get $6 USD than $6 CAD.

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