Two heads-up for Canadians -- on buying from Eastwood and Harbor Freight

[Zacharias]

Disclaimer: Mods, I don't believe this info has any impact on our sponsor.

For my fellow Canucks, good news on two fronts... well news to me, maybe I just found out what others know.

HF: I was always under the impression that you cannot buy from Harbor Freight, from Canada. The website makes it seem so. Turns out that is only half correct. True, HF will not ship outside the USA, nor will it allow you to use a Canadian billing address (or Cdn paypal acct) when you pay on the website.

HOWEVER, you can order from Canada via their toll-free order line. You still have to get the item shipped to a US address. Some people, like me, are close enough to a US border town with a UPS Store to make that practical. If not, there are other ways to trans-ship a package -- not practical for a small order, I guess, but on some items very worthwhile.

Eastwood: Not only did I just discover that Eastwood willingly ships to Canada, it is also a model of a US company that doesn't treat shipping up here like some insanely complicated exercise.

They only ship out once a week to Canada. I would assume they move a week's worth of stuff over the border at one shot, which limits the customs hassles... JC Penney did the same once upon a time. However, they don't charge any huge premium. Presumably that is because the famous "customs charges" we know all too well end up being assessed once on a large shipment, instead of piecemeal on each package.

Result? No BS $75-$95 "express shipping only" (on an order that would ship for free inside the USA), or "customs service charge: $35", etc., all of which are all too familiar to Canadians trying to order auto stuff online from the USA.

I paid Eastwood $17 total shipping, via Canada Post, for a box that weighed about 8 lbs and was easily 40 inches by 10 inches (bodywork tools), on a total $90 order.

And, as an additional bonus, because Eastwood is technically shipping from inside Canada, they can ship aerosols and liquids (prohibited for US-Can/Can-US cross-border postal and courier parcel shipping since post-9/11).

Just FYI.