Driving over the border to ship USPS when living in Canada

[maydaylabels]

Hi,
We're going to spend a month this summer in Canada. I anticipate shipping a fair number of orders during the month. We are Americans. We'll be staying about 30 minutes away from the nearest US Post Office. 80% of my sales are from the US.
1. Do I just drive over the border with my packages and take them to the USPS? Are the border guards (do they have border guards everywhere?) going to make a fuss about this? If I go weekly I'll have something like 150 packages - but they are small.
2. Does it make sense to set up and ship Canada Post for Canadian sales? We'll be in Quebec if that makes a difference; I don't speak French. But I think we'll be within an hour of Ontario.
Thanks for any help.

[cindylouwho2]

There are some links at the bottom of this post:
https://www.etsy.com/ca/teams/7654/etsy-international/discuss/17821085/page/6?post_id=355555017
but they may be out of date.

1. Yes, there are border guards, & you have to pay a fee to cross when it is for a commercial purpose. You will need a passport or enhanced licence to cross. Some areas have long lines, as in hours long (so you may want to look into using one of the cross-border mailing services, if any are available in the area you are staying in - it may be faster & even cheaper)

2. How big is your average package? You can ship 100 grams (a bit less than 4 oz) within Canada for $1.80 CAD plus tax if they are under 2 cm thick, but there is no tracking. That would only require stamps, though, no labels - just photograph the stamped, addressed package before shipping as proof of shipping for Etsy purposes.
Shipping from Qc to the other end of Canada costs more in Canada than shipping it from the US, often, if you want tracking or it is over 2 cm thick.

Depending on where you are staying in Quebec & even within the larger cities, your nearest Canada Post outlet may not have many (if any) English speakers, as most are run through drug stores & variety stores. Proximity to Ontario is not necessarily a guarantee of more English being spoken, depending on the area. In other areas you will have zero problem finding people who understand you, though, so I expect this won't be a big issue.

You might want to look into the legal requirements for running your business for one month in a foreign country as a tourist - I am honestly not sure what this would fall under, & I have been away from Canadian immigration law too long to easily figure it out. Laws are the main reason I didn't do the same thing from the US back in 2013.

ETA - you might want to look for a local team in the area/s you plan on staying - they may be able to give you more specifics.

Have a great trip!

[TigersandDragons]

Cindy brings up the point that you are bringing goods into Canada to sell, some of which direct to Canadians. That might cause you issues at the border, it really depends.

You can try Googling - english speaking areas of Quebec
to see if there are some english enclaves near where you are staying.
Are you going to be close to Montreal for example?

There is a Chit Chats in Montreal, so you could have your USPS parcels taken across the border through that company, though estimating if you have 150 light parcels to ship a week, they charge $1 per small parcel (up to 5 lbs.) so that would cost you $150 a week.
https://chitchats.com/locations/montreal

Here's a link to document you can print out if you want to ship any Canadian orders by Lettermail rates. Oversized Letter is the affordable service I use to ship my orders within Canada. No tracking, no insurance but I have only had one problem in 9 years and the envelope did come back to me (took a month). https://www.canadapost.ca/tools/pg/prices/Canada.pdf

Any possibility that someone else can run your business from the USA while you're on vacation? Though looking at your shop, and the nature of your product being custom clothing labels I'm guessing you're planning to bring equipment with you to make labels while on Vacation?

[maydaylabels]

Hmm, that's a good point! Maybe we should do two weeks in Canada instead, two weeks in Vermont, and just plan to process/ship everything once we get back to Vermont.