Telling Canadian Shoppers There Is No Fee at the Door

A shopper who remembers the doorstep

A shopper in Kelowna orders a jacket from an American store. When the courier arrives, he asks for duty, tax and a brokerage fee before he will hand the parcel over.

The extra charge was a surprise, and it stays with her. Since then, she hesitates over any online shop until she knows where it ships from.

Your shop is in BC, but its site gives no sign of it. Prices carry a bare dollar sign, the address is on a page she will not open, and nothing says what happens at the door.

Why the fee appears

A parcel crossing the border by courier has to clear customs. The courier usually acts as the customs broker, pays the duty and taxes owed, and collects them from the buyer along with its own fee.

Parcels sent by post follow a different process with its own handling charge, collected the same way.

A shopper rarely sees any of this at checkout. It arrives as a bill at the door, which is why it is remembered.

What a cautious shopper looks for

• Where the order ships from, stated in plain words.
• The currency, marked as Canadian dollars rather than a bare dollar sign.
• The taxes, shown in the cart and charged at checkout.
• The delivery cost, with nothing more to pay on arrival.
• A Canadian address and phone number somewhere obvious.

Each of these is easy to state and easy to leave out. When they are left out, the shopper fills the gap with the worst order she remembers.

Saying it beside the price

Put one line under or beside every price: ships from your town in BC, prices in Canadian dollars, nothing to pay on delivery.

The product page is where the decision is made, so that is where the line belongs. A banner across the top of the site helps too, but banners are easy to skim past.

Mark prices in a way that cannot be mistaken, such as CAD after the figure or a C before the dollar sign. A bare dollar sign on its own looks American to a wary buyer.

Saying it again in the cart

The cart is where hesitation peaks. Show the shipping cost, the taxes for the buyer's province and the full total, with a line saying that is everything she will pay.

Any free shipping threshold belongs there too, in Canadian dollars, so the buyer can see how close the order is.

Repeat the line in the order confirmation email. A buyer who reads it there stops wondering about the courier before the parcel arrives.

Making sure it is true

The line is only worth writing if it holds for every order. Check where each product actually ships from, including items a supplier sends directly to your customers.

A product shipped straight from a warehouse in the United States crosses the border, and the buyer may face the very fee you said she would not.

Ship it from your own stock, prepay the duties and say so, or label that product with where it comes from.

Check the payment account too. If it charges in American dollars, the buyer's card company converts the amount and may add its own fee for a foreign purchase.

Taxes charged at checkout

A Canadian shop charges sales tax at checkout, so the buyer sees it before paying. Which taxes apply depends on where the buyer lives and on your own registrations.

That question belongs with your accountant; this is general information, not tax advice. What matters here is that the total in the cart is the total the buyer pays.

A worked example

A sailmaker in a harbour town on Vancouver Island builds and repairs sails, and sells sail covers, repair kits and small hardware online to sailors across Canada.

Calls and emails kept asking the same thing: whether there would be duty to pay. The site showed prices with a bare dollar sign and mentioned BC only on the contact page.

Two lines of hardware were shipped directly from a distributor in the United States, so for those items the honest answer was sometimes yes.

The sailmaker now stocks that hardware in the loft and ships everything from the island. Every price carries a line saying so, in Canadian dollars, with nothing to pay on delivery.

That line now appears again beside the cart total and in the confirmation email, and the shipping page explains carriers and delivery times by region. The question is answered before anyone needs to ask it.

A shipping page for the details

The short line needs a page behind it: where orders ship from, which carriers are used, typical delivery times by region, the costs, and how returns work from within Canada.

Link to that page from the line beside each price, so a buyer who wants the details is one tap away.

If you also sell to buyers in the United States, say what they may pay on their side. The same plain answer that settles Canadian buyers serves American ones.

The counter-case

A shop that really does ship some goods from outside Canada cannot use the line on those products, and should not.

For those items, the honest version still answers the question: where it ships from, and who pays what on arrival. Silence is what a cautious shopper reads as bad news.

And a shop whose buyers already know it well, such as a local store selling to its regulars, has less to prove. Even there, the line costs nothing to add.

Answering the question before it is asked

1. List where each product actually ships from.
2. Check the payment account charges in Canadian dollars.
3. Add one line beside every price.
4. Repeat it in the cart beside the total.
5. Add it to the order confirmation email.
6. Show your Canadian address in the footer.
7. Explain the details on a shipping page.

Step one comes first because the line has to be true. A promise of nothing to pay on delivery, broken once by a courier at the door, does more harm than saying nothing.

How the checkout's payment step is built matters for card security paperwork too, a point that the payment page decides which card questionnaire you fill in sets out.

Frequently asked questions

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