Ups To Canada

Hello Canucks. I just ordered my first Shapeways part, everything went very smooth so far. I just got an email informing it was being shipped by <gulp> UPS. The Shapeways website fee schedule lists 2 price options to Canada: lower price longer transit "Standard Shipping (no broker fee)" and higher price faster transit "UPS". By those 2 descriptions (ie. UPS missing from the first description) I naively assumed/hoped it might be USPS (=United States Postal Service). But looks like not, it was the lower price but UPS.

I order a lot of stuff from USA so I know that USPS comes either to your door or ~5$ customs fee at the post office if its held there (plus any taxes, duty). UPS & couriers in general are a different story. Sometimes even when it lands without issues, a UPS bill arrives after the fact saying please pay these extra $$ handling fees. Sometimes the extra fees can occur right at delivery. And usually its high like 25-40$ even if its a box of duty free air.

So just curious, have any of you had after-the-fact UPS dinger fees? It looks like Shapeways is endeavouring to keep the customs paperwork in favour of their clients, but once its in UPS control, all bets off. If its the usual UPS dinger fees then I will have to figure out something different shipping wise because it makes an otherwise reasonable part stupidly expensive. Thanks for any comments.

Does it say "UPS", or "UPS innovations" ? Shapeways recently started using the latter, which means regular USPS orders will be carried by the UPS backbone first, and then transferred to USPS for final delivery.

The email reads as below. When I clicked on the tracking number it takes me to UPS website & yes it does say
Shipment information received by UPS Mail Innovations.
So you're saying I may not get UPS-dingered after all?

Tracking number: xxxxxxxx
Shipped via United Parcel Service (UPS)
Standard Shipping (no brokerage fees)
Please note that it may take up to 24 to 48 hours for tracking information to be available from the carrier.

Thanks for the clarification. So glad to see a USA based company being responsive & proactive to shipping/ & customs expense issues facing us north of the border.

This is one of the funniest things I have read in a long long time.

Shapeways used UPS for a long time and it hurt their business and people complained for years about it https://www.shapeways.com/forum/t/its-time-to-stop-using-ups-we-did-usps-inside.11181/ and then they finally changed it to USPS and everything was great. Then Shapeways wanted even more profit then their new lowered prices (Actually most items doubled in price they just told people they were lowering prices) so they went back to UPS but this time UPS innovations which does use USPS/Canada Post for the final delivery. Shapeways says this is to help the buyer because UPS has better tacking and is more reliable. But we all know this to be a complete lie too. All orders even those going to the same state in the US take and extra week and the tracking does not work. It is worse for us in Canada because it takes an extra week, tracking stops at the border (used to be traceable all the way to your door) and UPS will not help at all if it is lost.

It appears to me that UPS is subsidizing 3D print companies as they do the deliveries for every company I could find in the US printing in the materials I use. They also deliver those packages for less then it costs to actually deliver them so it must be made up by charging their massive brokerage and duty and bond fees to Canadians and other foreigners placing orders.

It is sad that I can buy stuff from China and have it delivered for less than shipping the empty box to my neighbour in Canada but that is the way the shipping companies want it. They want to ruin the countries they operate out of and force all business overseas so that is what they get.

Thanks for providing that discussion link. I had no idea there was a SW switchover of carriers at some point & all that history. I know all about the UPS/courier headaches into Canada. A buddy of mine who also imports a lot of personal hobby items wrote a step by step procedure of how to self-claim & mitigate all but 5$ dinger fees inflicted by couriers. It turns out you are not even obligated to pay UPS these fees but of course they will never tell you this. But the procedure is a minefield of responding to the delivery notice in a specific way, completing specific declaration forms & generally involves a visit to a UPS facility. On an expensive item maybe worth the effort. On a less expensive thing its a PITA which is exactly what they are counting on. Its an irritating racket to be sure.

And yet, similar to the China analogy, I can order something from Amazon.com (yes dot com not dot ca) & it arrives to my door lickety split in a UPS box, no extra fees, no nothing, generally free or inexpensive with Prime. It all depends on the deal the vendor has negotiated with the carrier. Amazon is a gorilla & I don't suspect many others have this clout.

This problem is exactly why there is a booming business in specialty shops in Canada now that fill this need. When you order something, you specify their USA border address as the shipping location & they take it from there via bi-daily trucking for a fee, but is much more reasonable. There may be a stipulation that value is <800$ or whatever the current goofy limit is & minimal customs paperwork which says made in USA which it would be & be duty free.

So my recommendation to Shapeways for non-USA customers is to allow a shipping address that may be different than the home/billing address. Maybe this is already the case, I'm not sure? Amazon has had this provision for years. Then it can go from print facility to USA address (probably very reasonably via UPS as USA customers enjoy) & we use a non USPS / courier / Canada Post to get it home.

China got a sweet deal too https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-year-to-help-you-buy-cheap-stuff-from-china/ Some post services don't really want it that way (USPS is not the only having issues and raising local prices to compensate a bit), they got hit by international agreements.
When you say non-USA, it should be non-USA & non-EU, BTW, SW should have no issues to ship inside both zones.