I think if you live anywhere in Canada other than Alberta (no PST), it is often not any cheaper to buy from the USA.
I've bought a LOT of camera equipment in the last 1.5 years and I always check US prices against Can prices. With a couple of rare exceptions it has been cheaper to buy in Canada (delivered price). I live in Quebec.
Plus I don't have to deal with returns and the border, if I have a problem.
I have bought a few items from B&H as well as KEH with no problem and I am in Ontario.
There is no duty on digital equipment ( photo or computers.etc you can check on canada custom website) from what I understand. I called customs when I ordered 2 manual focus lenses from keh and gave Customs Canada the the price and I was told duty was minimal $5-10 if any.
I too can cross the border easily and I find this works well.
As far as being charged duty - it seems to vary in my experience. I don't know exactly where NAFTA stands on it all, but at times I have been told that I will be charged duty because the products are manufactured in Japan and not in NA.
This was my original point, it does not "vary", the duties are very explicit, it is border agents who, through their ignorance of properly being able to categorize items, sometimes fail to put things under the correct section. Glass, specifically "objective lenses", are exempt from duty, period. NAFTA and the country of manufacture is irrelevant, as per sec. 9002.11.10. Items such as flashes, light stands, camera bags etc are considered "still camera parts/accessories" and usually fall under 9006.91.90, which is 5% duty.
Josh, I recommend that anyone in our situation carry the applicable section numbers when crossing the border to pick something up, that way if they mistakenly try to charge duty for a lens for example, you can politely point out the correct duty-free category and they are happy to oblige. Most people who have had no or few problems are those that have items shipped to them in Canada, but border agents can't be expected to know all classes of import items.
" but border agents can't be expected to know all classes of import items."
So true. I have an importers license used to do my own brokering many years ago and spent a lot of time researching the correct classification for the goods I imported. The book used then was about 6 inches thick, or maybe a bit more. I think that a lot of sub catagories have since been dropped, but there are still thousands of different catagories for goods. Customs agents do a very good job considering how much they need to learn & how many people they need to process per day at busy crossing points.
I'm sure they've been doing it a while, but the last couple shipments I received from B&H recently had the harmonized codes listed for each item on the commercial invoice. Therefore there should be no problem for the UPS/Fedex brokers to figure out each item's classification.
This wasn't the case a number of years ago when one of my B&H orders was delayed because the courier's brokerage department couldn't figure out how to classify a Domke lens wrap...
