Cheapest way to ship, and pay for, t-shirt from Canada to US

April 18, 2018 9:07 PM

I recently talked to an artist in Canada about buying one of their shirts. Postal office quoted them $18 to ship from Vancouver to New Mexico, almost doubling the price of the shirt. Is this the price of international mail, or is there a cheaper option?

And how to best pay the artist? Paypal is an option, but they also mentioned e-transfer, which is new(s) to me. What's the process for folks in the US? I'm a member of a credit union, and Chase, FWIW. Thanks on both fronts!

posted by filthy light thief to Shopping (5 answers total)

Yeah, that sounds about right - I guesstimated some measurements and punched them into this calculator and it gave me ~CAD$19 for the cheapest tracked option. Cheaper options would be an untracked parcel or "large envelope" (both ~CAD$10) if that is something you and the seller are comfortable with. Postage in Canada is expensive.

Paypal would probably be the easiest way to pay. E-transfer refers to Interac e-transfer, which I assume you won't be able to do since you don't have a Canadian bank account.
posted by btfreek at 9:23 PM on April 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Small Packet Air is basically glorified air mail for envelopes and small boxes under 2kg, with no tracking number available - and at about CDN$11, it's definitely cheaper than Tracked Packet. I've used it for years to ship to the USA and never had a package lost, but it does take a few days longer than a regular tracked parcel. It's your most economical choice for small items, and it works very well if you're not in a big hurry.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 4:06 AM on April 19, 2018 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I used print tees and this is one of the reasons I stopped, the numbers don’t really work. Generally I used to ship as light packet, which is the ~$10 untracked option. Usually they arrived within 5 days but a couple times packages got lost in the system and took far longer.
posted by rodlymight at 4:10 AM on April 19, 2018

Do you need it in a hurry? Could you wait until they (or friends) are crossing the border? It's not so far, and they might go periodically.
posted by kate4914 at 6:03 AM on April 19, 2018

Having worked for a Toronto-based shipper of things, there was a high correlation between the people requesting non-tracked shipments to the US and chargebacks for "lost" merchandise. There was enough of a link that we basically stopped doing non-tracked completely (except for small orders inside Canada, where the customer agreed to order at their own risk) and put up with the occasional irate international caller demanding cheap shipping.

If it's any consolation, it costs about the same to ship inside Canada, once you're outside the local delivery zone.
posted by scruss at 1:13 PM on April 19, 2018