My regular Mail lady asked why pickups were so much smaller lately as she handed be back an international package. I had to tell her I am using UPS for all international stuff now. Really helped to have the visual aid of the crushed beat up returned box with a $45 shipping charge on it.
She is so awesome, I hope to be able to use USPS again one day.
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As an jnternatuonal customer, Im usually much happier with USPS than I am with UPS.
USPS hands off to Canada Post (which has its own issues, for sure) and I generally get my stuff, or it gets to the post office and I have to go pick it up, but with predictable charges for taxes. (And now duties/tariffs. Goodie!) UPS has been known to come to the door and want more for “brokerage” than the item I bought cost, plus shipping. A classic one was a used monitor I bought for $25, plus $33 shipping (so shipping already cost more than the item) and then UPS wanted $78 at the door for taxes and brokerage. I sent it back. I got my $25 back, but not the shipping. It was still cheaper to go to the local PC vendor and just buy the monitor I wanted, though not much. ($99, tax in.)
Since then I’ve been leery of buying over the border where shipping is UPS only. I make sure that I’m getting something worth the surprise expense factor. Sometimes even pre-paid border costs aren’t sufficient, and they still charge at the door.
This of course is still before the “walk to the door with the ‘Sorry we missed you’ card, ring the doorbell and run.” trick that UPS is infamous for.
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Look I didn’t come here today expecting to have my long held views challenged, but good points 
Haha! Thanks for keeping an open mind and letting me stew on it.
In a densly populated area, the trucks are probably already full and it wouldn’t make any difference (besides being complicated).
@vicious1 Do you have an ETA for EU shipping? Someone in the German woodworker forum asked about it, he could test it.
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I thought I saw at one point you were exploring a fulfillment strategy? I wonder if international shipping could be improved by a fulfillment center in Canada? (And how many different headaches you’d experience with that? Uggh. )
Also not sure how you’d provide the printed parts.
I think we all just want it to continue to be fun so you can create MPCNC-TNG or LR-TNG, or a MPLaserWelder (I can dream!)
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Hopefully less than 2 weeks.
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I regularly have photographic prints delivered. Tracking is superb, I get five emails and ten hourly text messages to tell me when the package is arriving.
Then I get one final one to tell me it’s been left in a safe place - always leaning against our security door so we can’t open it to actually pick up the package - right next to the doorbell that remains untouched!
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You know, I was just talking about Amazon to my wife, i am not sure how they can stay profitable when they are at my house daily with 2 teen girls and my wife. (occasionally me).
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Daddy Bezos needs the money to buy the US. 
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Amazon makes most of their money from web services. The web store and the trucks are all just a front.
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Pretty sure Amazon makes a fair bit off of warehousing for global sellers. I almost always buy stuff “shipped by Amazon” for timing and convenience, which means Amazon is charging the seller for warehousing. The difference between the price shipped from China and the price shipped by Amazon is quite a bit, and I expect almost all of that is Amazon’s warehousing charges.
The retailing was the seed capital for the more profitable ventures.
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I like to talk about how AWS makes most of their profits. The web store and warehouses are big revenue sources. But they (at least used to) funnel those profits back into growth. The AWS has always been a money maker and it can’t get much bigger.
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Ooof man sorry your having to deal with all this 
Canada shipping is so messed up.
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doh I had been meaning to order the lowrider kit and I see it’s OOS now. Is that expected to go back in stock anytime soon or is tariff chaos likely to delay that for a while?
Ryan doesn’t sell kits he doesn’t have. So the stock will oscillate normally. I have no idea how the tariffs are affecting Ryan (I’m sure it’s not good). But I would not expect the out of stock message to mean anything more than it is just out of stock. He prints the parts in CA. I would guess those shouldn’t be that affected.
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Tariff have the world upsidedown right now. In my country we are so lucky. We can get direct shipping from china. We prefer sending stuff to our usa shipping forwarder better but another 10%extra plus 10-28% import tax in customs (depending on the product, if the product exceeds the 200 usd minimum) might change that but we have some products that pay 0 tariffs in customs (the hardware packs just pays 0, a phone pays 28% no matter the value, i have bought some heavy stuff and really expensive things, aluminum bars for some projects and they were all exempt)
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Tomorrow, they just sold out last night. As soon as I verify the inventory I will update it. Sign up for the notifications and you will get it the second I update.
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The EU… Eh, international listing isn’t done either, is it? The price including the plates being the same and advertising JJ.
No, it just needed to get input so we can connect to the other warehouse. Still waiting on Final pricing and shipping costs.
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