Buying from Canada!

POSTCRIPT

We are in a new international treaty regime. Don’t assume blindly that the favourable and anecdotal personal experiences posted herein under the old treaty automatically apply under the new one. It took years to negotiate.

- Go confirm what’s up with the CBP yourself that it may be exempt.
- Until you do, just assume and plan for the worst and hope for the best .

akg_ca,

You seem to be the guy who sits behind your keyboard delighting in giving people bad news.

You have googled the general rules.  However, if you look up the specific rules for audio components you'll find just about all of them exempt.

Keep up the hard work trying to make people unhappy.

Jerry

akg_ca is correct. You may or may not get lucky with customs charges. This is why I've been advised to state items for repair on customs document, in my case this has been true statement. Recently shipped $1k item to Canada via Fedex, recipient did not have to pay added customs fees. The one case where I had to pay customs it was obvious package had been opened. I'll also reiterate with postal services its a crapshoot, I've had small value packages go through both with and without delays, couple terrible experiences with larger value packages, in one case package lost in customs for over two months.! Never again!

@carlsbad

great that you took the effort to research the CBP rules for importation into the USA.

” delighting in giving people bad news” ,,, really? .…, hardly the case, dude.

I already prefaced my comments that I had purposely not researched the rules nor assumed any reliance for anecdotal opinions under the new treaty for purposes of this issue and left it for the “Royal you” to do the spadework to confirm yay or nay.

why?

Simple: I’m not affected by CBP positions in general to import into the USA because (a) I live in Canada and thus totally agnostic to US positions , and (b) I buy and sell 99.9% on CAM and it’s related sub USAM.

And notwithstanding the purist rules, administrative positions applied at the border can - and has - varied depending whether it’s a private customs clearing via FEDEX vs UPS, vs a public government customs clearing with USPOST / CANPOST. The latter govt ones have given me unexpected favourable breaks that the private clearing houses firms have not .

I bought a used amp from Canada in 2019 (?) from a private individual. I got an $84 customs charge. $69 of that was to UPS for brokerage fees. Then afterwards, I got slapped with a Use Tax from the state of TN which was another $260. I now try to stay away from Canadian purchases because of my experience. I don't mind the tariff. But I hate the UPS gouging me on fees.