Posted At : March 15, 2010 5:53 PM
| Posted By : Bridal Network
| Views: 91
Articles on these Topics:
Do It Yourself (DIY),
Wedding 101,
Wedding on a Budget
Articles about these Services:
Wedding Supplies & Favours,
Invitations: Stationery,
Gowns & Fashion: Accessories
Thanks to the Internet, you can now shop-the-world for your wedding and most notably for Canadians, all sorts of US-based websites, with their much lower pricing. But, in practice, shipping costs, customs, duties, taxes and other fees can quickly become a frustrating adventure and many a Canadian bride have found it more economical to abandon their order, rather than pay some significant and totally unexpected charges.
Wedding e-Stores for Canadian Brides
Here is a list of the top-20 ranked online wedding stores in bride.ca's Invitations and Favours & Supplies directory categories. Luckily, most of them are in Canada! Still, those 4-5 U.S. stores carry enough products to easily double your choices.. so, what do you need to know?
(*) Careful: these are not your only options for invitations or favours, just the most popular e-commerce outlets. For your full range of options, including local specialists, spend some time in the directory.
We have turned to our "resident expert", our good friend Linda from Nuptial Celebrations, to try and make some sense of this labyrinth of charges and learn what to look for before ordering, to ensure you are trully getting a deal.
Linda operates her own Canadian wedding web-store, in addition to another three "private label" websites by US-based wedding companies: Carlson Craft (often referred to as "Cceasy"), Stylart and McPhersons, as well as operating a website where customers can order with drop shipment directly from United States vendors (referred-to as Nuptial Celebrations: Shop USD). So no one understand this stuff better than her!
Shipping, Duties & other Charges, Demystified
Rule #1:
Before even browsing a website, first check out their About Us, shipping policy and return policy pages. This will help you determine where the company is located and decide whether it makes sense to even bother considering these items.
(*) If you can't find a physical address and/or phone number for contact purposes, leave the site. It can have all the web-security in the world, but that will not help you when there is a problem after you place your order.
So, your favourite item is on a U.S. website..
(Obviously, if you're on a Canadian website -that passed rule #1!- there is nothing much to discuss.. no duties or levies or customs or brokers.. what you see is what you get. But the interesting things happen after you "cross the border"!)
..or, a third-party U.S. website, under a Canadian label
..which is very often a source of confusion. See, many Canadian owned and operated companies are actually marketing a third-party "affiliate" website, which itself is operating out of the US. Most of the time, you can readily see this in the website's web address, in your browser. Something like www.somecompanyname.cceasy.com. So (in this case) this is really the Carlson Craft website, marketed locally by some Canadian company.
HINT: The About Us page should clearly identify the Canadian "host" of the website, while the company that actually powers the website should be shown on the bottom of the home page (with their name and the copyright sign ©).
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