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02/16/2018 at 9:24 am in reply to: Canadian buyer was charged for handling? He wants to know why… #33177
I’m in Canada – when I order from the U.S. and it isn’t through GSP, the government will randomly charge us duty/taxes based on what is on the customs form. The company delivering the item must collect these duties/taxes when they deliver the item to you.
In addition to duties/taxes, some couriers will charge a fee for collecting the duty/taxes. FedEx and UPS charge $25 for this service. Canada Post (which is who USPS hands off packages to) doesn’t charge any fee.
Therefore, as a Canadian buyer, I avoid sellers that ship using FedEx or UPS direct to Canada – $25 is a huge service fee on top of everything else. Even if duty is a few dollars, they will ask for the $25.
Also, fill out your customs forms honestly – nothing peeves me more then a $10 item with a $100 customs valuation on it – that means I’m paying 10x the tax in this example (about $13 instead of $1.30). I have no issue paying honest duties/taxes, but I reject items that are filled out incorrectly that would cost me. For some reason, $100 is commonly filled out – I assume that the sellers put that to match insurance value, but when I (or other buyers) rejects the item, the seller pays and it will show as undelivered on eBay.
02/15/2018 at 3:34 pm in reply to: What Sells On eBay: Pioneer Reel To Reel, trucker hats, vintage game parts, 8mm home movies #33099Keep waiting to find more Rolodex cards out thrifting myself. I don’t want to pay eBay prices.
I have 4 full round ones on my desk at work at the moment – all the Millenials think my system is crazy, but when they need to fax something to someone older then me who can’t figure out email, they come crawling to the Rolodexes.
Since being an Juggalo is considered being in a loosely organized gang, would having the sticker on your car grant the police enough reason to pull you over for no other reason then the sticker?
I’m wondering if it is a kid’s team that signed each others hat at the end of the season. We use to do this with hockey jerseys, keep them for a few weeks, then throw them out.
I’ve never had a problem with PayPal – I actual find them easier to deal with then eBay. On small value items they just refund both parties as it isn’t worth the hassle to them.
As long as you follow the rules for PayPal, your covered.
I remember my first camera for eBay was the Sony Mavica as well! Remember when you would take a picture and “MAVICA” would roll on the screen like slot machine wheels while it saved the photo?
Better then my previous method of printing photos from 35mm film and scanning them in and loading them up to Geocities to host them!
I also miss going to the bank with stacks of oddball checks and money orders before Billpoint was introduced.
Funny – my 21st anniversary is also this year – April 20th.
@T-Satt – agreed. We are arguing about being the top 1% of the world population. We all have it good in North America no matter where you live!
@omfug – Cannabis will be legal July 1, 2018 across Canada. The government will be selling it (just like alcohol). Curious to see how it affects where I live, as I am on the border and we already have a problem with young Americans coming over to drink (the drinking age is 19) and government supplied legal Cannabis can’t help.Immigration depends on who you are, what you know, who you know, or how much money you have. Probably similar to the U.S. in most ways.
Our politics are pretty different as well – Bernie Sanders would be pretty moderate or even boring here! He wouldn’t be Liberal or Socialist enough to get attention.
Reminds me of the random kitchen implements my mother would come after me with when I was a bad kid!
For me, it isn’t a pure calculation.
If I can easily and quickly make $10 on a $1 item, and it is very easy to ship/list, I’ll buy it.
If I can make $100 on an item that costs me $100, and it won’t sell for months, and is a pain to ship/list, I’ll pass on it – as I can probably get the same profit quicker on 10 x $1 items without the cash tied up.
It is an item by item judgment for me.
I always wonder if I was born in the U.S. what my views to healthcare would be – here it is a right when you are born to have healthcare, no matter who you are.
The other big difference I find socially with Canada is education – here every teacher/school is funded the same, so if you live in one neighborhood your education is the same as another – no matter how rich or poor you are – teachers get the same pay, schools get the same funding, have the same resources, etc. When I see some schools have no heat in the U.S., while others are building 20,000 seat football stadiums, it confuses me! Also, parents buy houses in certain neighborhoods because of the school in the area – just completely mind blowing to me.
Our taxes are high – where I live it is about 40% on income, 13% sales tax, beer is at least $32 for 24 bottles, milk is $4 for about a gallon – but our income is higher as employers don’t have to pay health insurance (minimum wage is $14/hr, going to be $15/hr in 2019) so it all is a balancing act in the end in my opinion.
Being Canadian, I find the American Healtcare system bizarre and scary. Not having to worry about any healthcare costs is one less burden to deal with in life and knowing I can walk into any hospital at any time and get seen, call an Ambulance when I need to, or visit a doctor about anything and not have to worry about how I am going to pay for it is a blessing.
Being near the border, it makes me sad when I watch U.S. news and they are trying to raise big time money for someone to get treatment for something that anyone would get covered for free by the government in Canada.
Where I live prescriptions are now free for anyone under 18 (or 25 if they are in school) and they are looking to extend this to everyone.
I find that depending on the area, you can get good thrift deals in Europe. I go to Europe for work, and usually I’m in industrial areas, and not tourist towns.
In the UK, a lot of towns have “boot sales” where you shop out of the trunks of cars that occur once a week in a field or near a church. They also have similar thrift shops to what we have in North America. I’ve been lucky in that I’ve gone to work on projects and I find someone in the UK that has the same passion for thrifting and takes me around. I usually just end up buying stuff for myself when in Europe since I have limited luggage space.
I’ve also tried in Germany and France, but couldn’t really find anything good.
If you look up a show called “Bargain Hunt” – it use to be on BBC America but episodes are on YouTube and other places – there are a lot of videos showing the various boot sales, antique markets, thrift sales, etc. that go on in the UK to give you an idea of what they are like.
I always calculate the amount of money I make per hour spent on eBay to compare to my full-time job hourly rate.
I keep track of every minute I spend on eBay in a spreadsheet and know up to the minute what I’m making an hour on eBay.
The last few weeks I’ve spent little time, but had great sales on eBay so my average for 2018 is $42.78/hr on eBay. For 2017, the average was just over $25/hr.
I’m doing things differently though for 2018 – I’m not listing lower-profit items this year, and spending a lot less time because of it. I’m curious to see how it works out in the long run for 2018.
It must be from a larger city/town as the first school in a town is always named after Lenin in the former USSR.
If you want to mess with someone that grew up in the former USSR, ask them what town they were from and say you went to the Lenin School there, lived on Lenin Street, and use to play in the Karl Marx square.
Even though you may not speak any Russian, it confuses them for a few seconds…
Whoop Whoop to all the Juggalos! Stay away from opened Faygo and “the bridge”.
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