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08/22/2025
Please note to our greatly missed American customers, we have since turned off shipping to the USA from Canada as all parcels now suffer an approximately $40.00+ brokerage processing fee that was never levied on US customers before the tariffs started.
America used to have an $800.00USD allowance for incoming packages from Canada. No brokerage or duties would apply to the shipment as it travelled from Canada to the USA. Only if it surpassed $800.00USD would brokerage or levies apply.
This $800.00 buffer was known as the "de minimis"
The de minimis refers to the legal concept of a de minimis threshold, which is a minimum value for goods or a level of action below which a law does not apply or a court will not take action upon. Most recently, the term gained prominence with the USA de minimis rule. An $800.00 duty free exemption for low-value imports which recently ended. This change is impacting small businesses and consumers who relied on the exception for duty free shipping to the USA.
As well, Canada's current belligerent position with the US on tariffs caused the original 15% tariff to balloon to a 35% flat tariff to be applied to anything we ship, and that's BEFORE any further tariffs are applied.
If the product we ship you, is made offshore, then that countries tariffs apply as well (i.e. 35% Canada + 35% China = 70% Yikes!!)
So due to multiple packages being refused by American customers at their doorstep when UPS couriers held out debit card machines to collect additional fees that the de minimis used to negate; and we having to lose thousands of dollars in a short 2 week period from those customer refusals to pay the additional fees, we had no choice but to stop shipping to our former US customers.
The only way we could get our packages back was to pay the full shipping cost back to us, plus the refused $40.00+ brokerage fee, plus any tariffs the customer would have been charged.
Our only other option offered by UPS was to "abandon" the package, which we did on all of them, as shipping them back and paying all the return fees would cost more than it did to abandon them.
Since UPS now owns the "abandoned" goods, all packages will be opened and liquidated at auction to fund the next UPS staff Christmas party or other ongoing operations.
I would like to thank all of our prior American customers for their business while it lasted. It was a pleasure to assist you and was satisfying to help many of you on the phone with technical questions.
I remain, Jason Bourcier.