I buy pedals rarely, but I almost exclusively get them from Japan because it's cheaper all-around (and faster) than getting from CONUS.pedals from Japan
This is absolutely devastating.Quick UPS story to throw a little fuel on the fire: years ago I sold a bicycle frame and had to ship it across the country. Grabbed a legit bike shipping box from a local shop, wrapped all the tubes, packed that sucker with foam and newspaper, and sent it off. A month later, the buyer messages me saying they never got the package, so I call UPS. "There was an issue and your item is being returned." When I get the box, there's a slip saying the item was damaged due to "improper packaging" and they wrapped the whole shebang in a fresh new box for the return. I pull the original box out and it's covered in tire tracks. The frame inside is absolutely pancaked. After about 7,000 phone calls they finally admitted that they ran it over with one of their trucks and would pay out the insured rate. Of course I had to follow up with them multiple times before it actually happened. Worst part is it was a pretty rare handmade frame from a now-defunct builder and can't be replaced![]()
As a former peak season night sort UPS employee, I just gotta add one unrelated thing to the discussion...Quick UPS story to throw a little fuel on the fire: years ago I sold a bicycle frame and had to ship it across the country. Grabbed a legit bike shipping box from a local shop, wrapped all the tubes, packed that sucker with foam and newspaper, and sent it off. A month later, the buyer messages me saying they never got the package, so I call UPS. "There was an issue and your item is being returned." When I get the box, there's a slip saying the item was damaged due to "improper packaging" and they wrapped the whole shebang in a fresh new box for the return. I pull the original box out and it's covered in tire tracks. The frame inside is absolutely pancaked. After about 7,000 phone calls they finally admitted that they ran it over with one of their trucks and would pay out the insured rate. Of course I had to follow up with them multiple times before it actually happened. Worst part is it was a pretty rare handmade frame from a now-defunct builder and can't be replaced![]()
The so-called "duties" are most certainly just the federal and provincial sales tax added to the order value, which is something to be expected by the customer, since they're government-mandated! UPS brokerage is not as bad as it used to be. I think they must have gotten regulated by the government, since they were indeed outrageous in the past. Last time I paid around $13 for that service. If customer wanted to act as their own broker, they could have called UPS to decline their brokerage and save the brokerage fees (but it's hardly worth the trouble). I'm calling an unreasonable and/or uninformed customer. I would have educated them and asked them to accept the fecking package. I've shipped to 15 countries on 4 continents and nobody has complained about duty/brokerage to date. I do use regular mail though (tracked), not UPS. It may take a little longer to get there, but it's inexpensive (especially if you open a small business account with Canada Post), and I've had zero issues.I'm coming close to losing my cool with UPS, to be honest.
Once again, we shipped a relatively high value order to Canada, customer was greeted with surprise duties / brokerage fees and refused the shipment...
Burn! Ya brown clad sons of... actually our quarrel is likely with some douche in a dark blue suit.I disagree, Jerry. UPS is as bad or worse than ever.
I'm trying to self-clear a UPS shipment for the first time, but UPS is making that a formidable task.
The message left is mostly obliterated by background noise, the person rattles off the tracking number in a machine-gun-burst with some unintelligible bits in the beginning of the tracking# info itself (I repeated the message 10x and still not sure what the beginning of the tracking code is); the first half of the message sounds like the sing-song lilt of the Swedish-chef sped up to 45rpm, ...
UPS needs to tell their operators to slow down, articulate and repeat to confirm. Ahh who am I kidding, they want the brokerage fees.
To top it off, if I don't respond "immediately" "today", the package is threatened to be sent back to its origin.
I received the message last night at 11pm; they left that one message last Friday and in the ensuing days have not tried to contact me again.
I'm certain I will be charged storage fees, if the package hasn't already been sent back, in excess of whatever the brokerage fees would've been.
UPS brokerage/self-clearing practices amounts to EXTORTION. F*@# 'M!
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If my son, heavens forbid, ever gets a job with UPS, I'd be so embarrassed that I'd just tell everyone he's a drug dealer.
Funny one of my recent orders i was thinking how i wish you sold pots as I cannot count how many times ive only been missing a pot value for a build, but i just end up the. Ordering extra crap to justify the SBP, LMS, or tayda order.Maybe I'll grab some from @StompBoxParts to make available for situations like this.
It'll obviously be more economical to order directly from SBP, but when you just need a single pot and are already paying for international shipping...
Yeah. I'd probably have a lot more boards that were put in the cart to justify the shipping in my stash if that was a thing.Funny one of my recent orders i was thinking how i wish you sold pots as I cannot count how many times ive only been missing a pot value for a build, but i just end up the. Ordering extra crap to justify the SBP, LMS, or tayda order.
The problem with burnt UPS trucks is that those packages will NEVER get to their intended recipientsBurn! Ya brown clad sons of... actually our quarrel is likely with some douche in a dark blue suit.
more ships going China -> US than the reverse is my guess. I also think either the Chinese government or the companies heavily subsidize. just speculation but I don't think there's nothing to it.It seems weird that all these Chinese companies on aliexpress can ship to the US for cheap or free (and labor costs don't explain it, as they get delivered by a US carrier at the end of the route), yet the opposite route isn't possible. How can they do it without taking a loss on the sale?