Whats the best way to ship something to Canada

override367

I have a friend who lives Beyond the Wall in the frozen north (the French part) who is upgrading his system and wants to toss his old hard drive, anyway redownloading everything he has would cost I'm told the GDP of Switzerland on his internet carrier

So I'm trying to figure out what service would one use to mail a hard drive up there? It costs very little to buy a 1tb hd, and I have capless 60mb internet so I could fill it up and just mail it, should I use UPS? Fedex?

Cauld

I would use USPS, I find UPS and Fedex cost a lot when they handle customs for you.

override367

I wasnt aware USPS even shipped internationally, thank

Kate of Lokys

Cauld wrote: »

I would use USPS, I find UPS and Fedex cost a lot when they handle customs for you.

This is true, both UPS and FedEx charge ridiculous "brokerage fees" which can run upwards of $40-50 (on an item that might only cost $60 to start with). USPS is the way to go.

That said, I'm not sure this is a good idea. Hard drives do tend to be cheaper in the US than in Canada, but with more online retailers shipping to Canada, the difference is shrinking - the 1TB WD drive that sells for $65 on Newegg.com is only $5 more on Newegg.ca. I'd be more concerned about the contents of the hard drive than the cost, though. If you send a used hard drive across the border, there is a chance that it will be opened and hooked up to a computer to check its contents, and depending on what those contents are, one or both of you could have some fairly awkward explaining to do. You might also be violating various import/export and intellectual property laws by doing this.

Is there a reason why your friend can't just burn the contents of his hard drive to a few DVDs, or wait until he gets the new drive then copy the files over directly?

Rikushix

Kate definitely nailed it. Electronics (computer components specifically) are more expensive in Canada, but not by much any more. The difference shrinks every day. It's probably ~10% or so. Might as well just get it from NCIX or Newegg.

That being said, I would like to think that his hard drive is sufficiently occupied that a few DVD's won't cut it. Those are only 4.7 gigs, you know.

Loathing

As someone that lives in Canada, I'm also voting for USPS. Once it gets to the border it transfers over to Canada Post and gets delivered like normal mail. UPS/FEDEX will just fuck you over with extra charges since it's coming over the border. FEDEX withing Canada is alright, but UPS still sucks.

Regarding HD's:

As was previously stated, HD's over here aren't all that expensive. Might just be easier for him to just buy one, hook up the old one as a secondary or external drive and just transfer over all the stuff he want's to keep. tigerdirect, canadacomputers, newegg.ca are some decent places to get HD's online here.

Rikushix

I don't remember about Newegg, but I believe Tigerdirect will still ship from Chicago, even if it's the Canadian site. NCIX on the other hand is Canadian through and through (Vancouver based )

override367

Well he already only has half his steam catalogue downloaded. He was going to download shogun 2 since it came with his 580 but that would eat up half his remaining monthly bandwidth allotment

Mailing data is cheaper than sending it digitally in canada, I think

Loathing

Rikushix wrote: »

I don't remember about Newegg, but I believe Tigerdirect will still ship from Chicago, even if it's the Canadian site. NCIX on the other hand is Canadian through and through (Vancouver based )

Tigerdirect's warehouse is in Toronto, so unless it's an out of stock part it should come from inside Canada. Unless the warehouse moved, then well fuck me.

And that depends on ISPs override....but generally yes, we take it up the rear no matter what ISP were with here.

override367

80gb/month limit apparently

Thats like a slow afternoon for me

Rikushix

Loathing wrote: »

Rikushix wrote: »

I don't remember about Newegg, but I believe Tigerdirect will still ship from Chicago, even if it's the Canadian site. NCIX on the other hand is Canadian through and through (Vancouver based )

Tigerdirect's warehouse is in Toronto, so unless it's an out of stock part it should come from inside Canada. Unless the warehouse moved, then well fuck me.

Oh. The latter must have happened then - I lived in Kingston a few years ago (:winky:) and ordered a pretty basic cable from Tigerdirect only to have it ship out of Illinois...