Hobby Search

[gavino200]

I'm used to Hobbysearch now. But I do remember that I thought it was strange when I started buying there. You go through all the steps like you're buying the item, but then sometimes it isn't actually bought but just waiting to be processed. Then you get an email to pay, and you go through the steps with paypal. Maybe that's just after hours, or only for pre-orders. But in any case I did think it was weird. 

 

[chouw99]

On 12/3/2020 at 12:19 PM, James-SNMB said:

Just got an email from Hobby search that EMS and Air Parcel service (among others) to Canada have once again been suspended.

 

The only options to Canada right now are DHL, Surface Parcel, and Surface Small Packet.

 

Any Canadians with experience importing via DHL? I assume I'm going to be dinged the brokerage fee, etc.?

 

Otherwise the cost for my order would be similar to a Surface Parcel and be much quicker...

 

Not really keen on any of these options, but December pre-orders are coming, so I'm looking for least-worst!

 

Anyone else experiencing abnormally long delays with Hobby Search? I ordered an 8620 steam locomotive that has been stuck in Japan Post since October last year. Apparently they're saying this is a fairly normal thing and that other's have much worse experiences with items held since March 2020. The fault was attributed to chaos at their post office so I'm guessing things must have gone terribly south with the mail in Japan like what we have here in Canada. At this point I'm not sure whether to get a re-fund and order another loco or just lay enough Unitrack to reach Japan and drive the train myself.

 

[chouw99]

Just now, chouw99 said:

Any Canadians with experience importing via DHL? I assume I'm going to be dinged the brokerage fee, etc.?

At this point, I feel that the $15-20 brokerage fee and getting micro-scoped by customs is more than worth it if shipping to Canada.

[James-SNMB]

@chouw99, yep, DHL is our only viable option right now until air travel picks up. (I'm not keen on waiting out a 3-6 month ocean voyage for the parcel options. Seems like a lot of time for something to get lost.)

 

My last order was my first with DHL, and their fees (which far exceeded what customs actually charges) basically doubled the cost of shipping when it hit the border. I've still got one pre-order with HobbySearch, but otherwise I'm using a lot of restraint when it comes to ordering from overseas. On the plus side, it showed up in 3 days...

 

I miss SAL...

 

I hope your lost order eventually turns up. Probably sitting buried in some warehouse waiting for a plane to catch.

[katoftw]

I have many orders sitting in warehouses. This is quite normal considering the lack of flights around the globe.

[Tony Galiani]

22 hours ago, James-SNMB said:

My last order was my first with DHL, and their fees (which far exceeded what customs actually charges) basically doubled the cost of shipping when it hit the border. I've still got one pre-order with HobbySearch, but otherwise I'm using a lot of restraint when it comes to ordering from overseas. On the plus side, it showed up in 3 days...

 

I am curious about this.  I had two DHL shipments last month (from Japan to North Carolina in the US) and the only cost I paid was the shipping cost indicated when I made the purchase.  Are there extra fees or customs charges in Canada?  Or does DHL imposes some surcharge for Canadian deliveries?

Wondering about this since my wife, who is from New Brunswick, keeps talking about moving back to her home town.

Ciao,

Tony Galiani

[bill937ca]

I get charged HST which is 13% plus a handling fee.  This probably means Ottawa has gone after the international carriers like DHL, UPS and Fedex like they went after eBay years ago.  But I usually do not get charged on EMS or SAL unless its really big. The percentage would vary by province. Sometimes  DHL asks for payment online, sometimes they note the charge and I never hear about it again. Very hit and miss. But some of this could also be COVIV.  How do you know?  The smaller my order the better chance of it being under the radar.

Edited March 5, 2021 by bill937ca

[bill937ca]

From my email archive. On a $197.52 Cdn AmiAmi order (14,260 Yen). I paid $38.35 to DHL. The HST would have been $25.67.

 

It costs a bit but we do do get health care in the whole deal. And no taxes on lottery wins. Even $70 million like somebody did here a week ago or so.

[chadbag]

I know in my business I used to run online, I shipped some stuff form the US to Canada using Fedex Ground and my customer was not happy as they had to pay all the taxes and customs fees plus a fee to Fedex who acted as their "Customs broker" (instead of them having to go to the customs office and handle all the paperwork themselves).

 

I quickly learned to ship all the orders to Canada using the USPS.  In most cases they would either get charged nothing, or just get charged the actual taxes etc with no expensive customs brokerage fees.  I was sending stuff worth from US$ 20 to US$ 1000 or more.

[Tony Galiani]

Thanks for the info. No move imminent but good to know.  I'll just have to buy a lot of Japanese trains before we ever move!  If we ever do.

Ciao,

Tony Galiani

[James-SNMB]

Canada customs will charge the appropriate sales tax, plus a handling fee of something like $9.95 for the privelage. If your package comes through Canada Post, they hold your package at the post office and you pay those fees when you go pick it up. As @bill937ca says, customs seems to let most of our model train orders through without a second thought and there's usually no charge. (I think anything under $20 us in value is also expect from tax when  importing, but not a lot of things I order overseas are coming in that low.) I assume they have finite staff/resources and elect to focus on items where there is additional tariffs to collect (model trains are exempt from additional tarrifs).

 

DHL charged me the applicable tax, which is fair enough and expected, but their processing fee is a percentage of the value of the goods and exceeds what Canada customs would charge by a few dollars. They also charged a payment fee of around $5 to support processimg payment of these other fees (they say it is for website upkeep and to cover the costs of their drivers carrying handheld payment devices... I call BS). The invoice was (deliberately) very vague and it took a lot of digging around for me to figure out what each of the three separate charges was for. 

 

So there's a bit of gouging going on IMO.

 

Not that I'm knocking DHL specifically, all the couriers are the same, and I avoid them for this reason. But it's a necessary evil for now, and it was not a surprise to me because I've learned this lesson the hard way before. It did come very fast though, as I mentioned, but in normal times there's no model train emergency big enough for me to justify the extra costs for that speed.

 

Sorry for the bordlerine rant. I've got no issues paying the taxes I'm supposed to, but I'll also take the savings as a bonus when I don't have to. I'veIt's the bogus courier markup and extra fees that grind  my gears a bit. I've certainly had good experiences with couriers when ordering stuff from doemstic sources, and I have very limited experience with ordering stuff by courier from overseas. So I don't know if this is the typical experience for brokerage services from couriers.

 

Regardless, I will quietly absorb these fees again when the Thalys is released in May, and be content.

[cteno4]

James,

 

im of the same ilk, I don’t mind paying the appropriate tax, it’s fees that get really exorbitant that would piss me off. Especially because it can now be done all electronically and cost next to nothing to provide in bulk and just pay online so no collection is needed at the door. If the courier service is having to deal with all the customs paperwork I can see a small fee, but even $5 seems exorbitant and a gouge just cause they gotcha... 

 

jeff

[bill937ca]

DHL's hidden fees questioned.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/gopublic/dhl-hidden-fees-1.5935236

[roadstar_na6]

There actually is a law in Germany that prohibits charging services you never ordered and in the past that has always prevented me from paying those fees or in terms of DHL have them refund it. 😄

[Kiha66]

Welp I put in an order with hobby search a week ago, they finally got back to me with the shipping price which wasn't listed but according to their site should have been about $30.  I got a surprise bill of $65 for the shipping alone, I'm not sure I'll be giving them business in the future.  I can't cancel the order because it took them so long to respond that it is now outside their cancelation window.  They don't seem interested in international orders anymore.  ☹️

Edited March 12, 2021 by Kiha66

[cteno4]

Yikes, did they give you a reason for the high price? Was it DHL? Large sized?

 

jeff

[Kiha66]

DHL shipping (only option), 4 HO cars and a kit.  I'm sure it was maybe size related but I was disappointed in the huge increase.  The fact it took them a week to respond and thus means I cant cancel the order does not make me think highly of the service. 

[disturbman]

Did you ask them to cancel anyway? You could cite the fact they overshoot their own cancellation window and that was not a price you were expecting or ready to pay.

[cteno4]

Yeah I would try a push back at least on this. Not good. Shipping issues seem to have really pushed their cs here.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

6 hours ago, Kiha66 said:

DHL shipping (only option), 4 HO cars and a kit.  I'm sure it was maybe size related but I was disappointed in the huge increase.  The fact it took them a week to respond and thus means I cant cancel the order does not make me think highly of the service. 

 

I've found that when you point something like this out to them, they're pretty good about making an exception. I bet they'll fix it or cancel. 

 

 

[lukewang01]

They say you can reply to the inquiry confirmation email if they don't respond within 3 working days. 

 

HS increased their shipping rate quite a bit this year. I got two b-train sets plus a Rement box and they asked 4,117 for shipping, whereas last year I got KATO DX Hokutosei plus the Mini Diorama kit and they only asked 3,740 for shipping.

[bill937ca]

2 hours ago, lukewang01 said:

HS increased their shipping rate quite a bit this year. I got two b-train sets plus a Rement box and they asked 4,117 for shipping, whereas last year I got KATO DX Hokutosei plus the Mini Diorama kit and they only asked 3,740 for shipping.

 Quite a bit?  Converted to USD that is  a difference of $5.93. You need understand the foreign exchange better Every 100 Yen is about 91 cents US.

[chadbag]

11 minutes ago, bill937ca said:

 Quite a bit?  Converted to USD that is  a difference of $5.93. You need understand the foreign exchange better Every 100 Yen is about 91 cents US.

 

That small a difference could be just the changes in the rates from last year to this year.

 

Amazon doesn't seem to have changed much -- still hit or miss on whether you get the $15-$20 or the $45 shipping for a bookshelf case or so (which I think is based on bad size/weight data in their database since this has been a problem since I've been dealing with Amazon.co.jp, like 3-4 years now).

[lukewang01]

2 hours ago, bill937ca said:

 Quite a bit?  Converted to USD that is  a difference of $5.93. You need understand the foreign exchange better Every 100 Yen is about 91 cents US.

I probably should mention box size is different and the b train one is lighter. Two casket plus the box of that kit which is like three and a half casket in total.

Edited March 12, 2021 by lukewang01

[lukewang01]

I quoted the same items without the diorama kit since it's sold out. It came to 4,128 I don't know how much more shipping you'll have to pay after adding that diorama kit.

 

Even without the diorama kit, there is a 10.4% increase in shipping, and DHL announced a annual increase of 4.9% for 2021. So I'm not sure why HS decided to charge more, maybe their business deal changed this year.

 

DHL Japan Price Increase for 2021

Edited March 12, 2021 by lukewang01