Seeking input from other professionals: Canada/Insurance

[JohnQuixote]

To fellow professionals with Canadian clients:

Canadian courier services allow a maximum of $500 insurance on jewelry items sent from Canada to the US. Do you have customers in Canada who have returned items, or shipped items back for sizing/adjustment/trade-up, etc? If so, how are you handling the insurance situation?

Consumer input welcome too, as always.

 

[Rhino]

Just learning about this myself John. I seems the best viable option would be for vendors like you and I to provide our clients with the necessary paperwork to use whatever 3rd party insurance company we use and to send the goods back and just deduct the costs from the refund since there are no local carriers who will insure across the border. I believe we''ve done this in the past when registered mail wasn''t an option. I''d double check and make sure with our insurance companies first but I think this may be the answer for our PS Canadian clients and/or those who can''t insure merchandise they are shipping back from out of our country.

 

[Richard Sherwood]

I've had a couple Canadian clients use my number and third party insurance company. They drove across the border before fedexing it though.

Is there a lot of (customs) paperwork involved in shipping across the border? How about fees?

Martin Sheffield probably knows. I'll give him a call and ask him if he'll post.

 

[sydney]

Thanks for starting this thread. I am keeping an eye on it- hopefully some easy solutions can be found.

 

[allycat0303]

Hi John,

How are you? I had multiple issues sending it back and forth. There are a lot of courriers here that will refuse to ship jewelery too. In any case, the easiest thing to do is to drive over the border and ship it.

In Quebec anyways, it''s very easy to insure a loose stone (maybe because this isn''t a huge diamond place, so insurance companies are more willing to insure a loose stone)

We found that even that for independent insurance the easiest is La capitale.

However I just wanted to add that for Canada customs, if you ship jewelery over the border for repairs etc. in the US, and it is shipped back to you, it is considered a NEW ITEM and tax is levied on the ring as a whole.

AGAIN!! Even if you paid the inital import tax. So when you send over the border you are potentially looking a HUGE tax cost. From my research back in the day, there did not seem to be any ways around this.