Stupid Shipping Woes

[Liq_Wurm]

Hey guys, i just wanted some outsiders advice on a shipment. not related anyway to any members on this forum. i'm just trying to get an idea for what i should do.

So i bought this pro audio snake from some company on ebay. it's like 33 lbs.
anyway I had paid him $36 to ship it to me in canada. He claimed that he shipped out one already, however a month went by and no word of it, my guess is it's lost in the postal service, or it was never sent at all. So i had him call me and he told me that he will send out a seccond audio snake for me, this time he used UPS.

So it finally arrived this morning, and the UPS guy wanted an additional $37 for "customs and duties"

what gives, if this tardo shipped it Express, or EMS service then i would already have it in my hands without these additional fees.

I asked the ups guy if he could come back on monday after i speak with the seller. so my question is, does this sound right? should i call up this seller and give em hell?
or should i just accept it and be thankful it's over.

Thanks guys.

 

[The Drizzle]

Anything other than USPS shipping from Canada to the US or the US to Canada is going to have customs and duty fees.

 

[beatifik]

the factory that my company uses is in canada and whenever they ship stuff UPS we have to hand over a check to the UPS driver for hundreds of dollars. my boss is never happy about it, but that's the way it goes...

 

[Liq_Wurm]

damn i never knew ups was such a hassle.

 

[dark penguin]

Yep. I get hammered for duties every time someone ships to me via UPS from the states. I pretty much won't use UPS anymore.