Canadians have long known that the selection of products in the United States is far better than in Canada. It seems like new products always arrive their first and we have to wait months, sometimes years, for those very same products to be available north of the border. However, even when the very same product is sold in Canada, we often have to pay a hefty premium compared to our American cousins. Now that our dollar is trading roughly on par with the US dollar, this premium is even more painful than before.

While it has become a national pastime to take weekend shopping trips to US shopping malls to stock-up on great deals and take advantage of our strong dollar, many Canadians are turning to online shopping for the same reasons. The problem is that many US websites won’t ship to Canadian addresses, and if they do, the amount they charge you for international shipping and brokerage fees drastically reduces the cost savings of shopping in the States in the first place.

Ship to the Border

Many Canadians have found away around this problem by finding a place to ship to on the US side of the border. By doing this, you can order from any US company and take advantage of cheap shipping rates (many times free since it is a US shipping address) and avoid the costly brokerage fees of having a package brought across the border for you. You simply pick up your package and bring it across the border yourself, only paying Canadian tax on the item. This simple process can save you hundreds of dollars on a single item and thousands of dollars on all your cross border shopping purchases.

Check out our other posts in this section to learn how to find, and ship, to border locations.

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