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On my recent return to Canada after 15 years living and working in the United States, I was delighted to find that some of my favourite retail chains have either opened shops in Canada or now ship to Canada.

I would be able to live in Montreal and order goods with no hassle. Six months on, there may be no hassle, but there certainly is a cost.

I was recently shopping for two lower kitchen cabinet pull-out drawers. The kind kitchen specialty stores charge a small fortune for custom made pieces.

The Container Store had just what I wanted at CDN $60.98, a price comparable to the US price ( $59.00). Great!

I would have to pay duty (CDN $3.96) and GST (CDN $3.25) but this was only a few dollars more than I would pay in state sales tax, if I were in the United States.

Imagine my shock when, after selecting this item at the Container Store’s online store, I was quoted shipping charges of  CDN $37.07, three times the shipping charge to US locations (US $12.50)!

I wanted to take advantage of greater product selection and lower prices by buying online from the United States, but I didn’t expect to be ripped off by exorbitant shipping and postal costs.

What should I do? I discovered two potential solutions.

US Post Office Box

There are a dozen US Post offices within a 15 mile radius of the US-Canadian border crossing at Champlain, a 45 minute drive south of Montreal.

The closest ones are in Rouses Point and Champlain, NY, as well as in Alburg, VT.

For US $60/year, you can have your own Post Office box. The postmaster will hold US mail indefinitely, and foreign mail for a month. The postmaster at Rouses Point even called me in Montreal to tell me that I had a package from Singapore waiting to be picked up for more than a month and asking me if I wanted to come and pick it up.

There is another advantage of using UPS rather than Canada Post; it’s cheaper! A 20 lb. parcel air mail to the United Kingdom would cost US $75.70 if mailed from the United States, but CDN $98.85 (plus tax!) if mailed from Montreal.

If you regularly mail CDs or DVDs to the United States, there is another bonus: media mail, where the cost of shipping can be as low as US $1.25!

Mail Services

Several companies in the United States offer mail services for Canadians. Kinek, for example, just across the border in Champlain (NY), will accept packages of under 10 lbs and hold for a month, at the very reasonable cost of US $5.

Kinek will accept packages weighing more than 10 lbs and/or hold the packages for more than a month, although there is an extra charge for this.

Border Mail Services, also in Champlain, offers a full range of services, including a “business service” which includes weekly mail drop off to downtown Montreal for US $175/year.