Online Shopping?

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Woodyncarlyle

New Member
Oct 22, 2006
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Hi all. I was wondering if anyone can reccomend some on-line stores in Canada, or Canadian Hobby shops with Web Sites. The nearest Hobby Shop is more than 2 hours away for me. To my Canadian Neighbours, has anyone had experience with E-bay or hobby shops in the states. What is usually the shipping time and Duty costs, when orders cross the border?

Thank you
Woody
 
HI

First off do a google search for Hobby shops.

E-Bay is one of the biggest online hobby sales web-site.. There are heaps of horror stories and bad deals.. I have been using them for about 6 years and only been screwed once. All in All 99.9999% of the people are great and you can get a great bargain.

As aways buyer be ware using E-Bay
 
Woody: where are you (roughly) and what are you modelling? I know a few hobby shops in the Toronto/Hamilton area that do mail order, but some people feel the prices are a bit high.
I've always had the luxury of establishing a personal relationship before trying for mail order.
 
online shopping

We live in SE Sask. two hours from Regina and Brandon Mb. There is a store in Regina, but they are very high priced from what I've seen so far. There is a store in Alberta, Canadian scale Rail and Hobby, website www.Canadianscalerail.com, Has anyone had experience with this company, Their website is good, and prices seem resonable. So I think I may try a small mail order with them. Any Thoughts?

Thanks
Woody
 
I've been told and I've read that the movement of the Canadian dollar back towards par has made it at least a little easier to buy direct from the USA shops. However, I don't know anything specific about duties and customs charges except that they can be unexpectedly high. Some shippers (not just model railroad shops) use carriers that charge the recipient a double digit processing fee for the customs transaction-- that's a fee on top of a fee.

EBay casual sellers that ship to Canada from the USA tend to be a little less sophisticated and will just do a green customs form at the post office. I have shipped items to Canada back when I was selling and I did not hear about any of my buyers having to pay customs fees. I used the basic padded envelope. One advantage of N Scale is that you can get away with that in many cases because the items are so small. I will usually add an extra layer of bubble wrap around the item just for extra protection.

Shipping time has varied from just a few days (although that's rare) to weeks across the border. I would consider ten business days to be about the median ship time.
 
 
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