While shopping around for my first digital SLR camera, it became incredibly frustrating the Canadian resellers were so much more expensive then US online stores. Even after the exchange rate, the price was hundreds of dollars cheaper but unfortunately shipping (especially border crossing charges) are ridiculous. Some companies will not even attempt to ship.
Here is a summary (edited) of what a local Canon reseller explained to me.
You are right that the US prices are lower. It definitely makes our life harder!
The reason they are lower is because the US is such a big market, Canon and other manufacturers try to keep prices a little bit lower and is also why they don't service US products anywhere else in the world.
The other reason is because in the '70s, US retailers started importing "Grey market" goods directly from Japan or China and selling them at a lower price. Canon lowered their US prices so that the consumer could still get a US product at a decent price. Canadian retailers did the same thing, but we are not a big enough market to warrant the price drop.
Canon tries to discourage cross border shopping with these types of things so if you buy it from the states, your one year warranty drops to 3 months and Canon Canada will not work on the camera at all. It will have to be sent to canon service in the US and you must have a US shipping address for them, to work on it.
Comments
John Morris - November 24, 2005 4:50 am
If you take a look at Dell alone you'll be shocked at the differences between the Canadian/American prices. Near the end of every quarter Dell comes out with a great sale to up their sales to help increase that quarters revenue. Dell usually ends up selling the servers at cost.
End of last quarter I price a Dual Xeon 2.8, 1 gb ram, 2x80 gb hard drive on Dell's U.S. site for ~$1000 USD. Living in Canada we are unable to make purchases off the Dell.com/US site therefore I got a quote off the Canadian site and the total cost ended up being around $2400 for the same server. I contacted our business Dell rep and was told he could knock 15% off the $2400 as a special. That meant I could buy 2 Dell Dual Xeon's from their U.S. website at the same cost as 1 Dell Dual Xeon from their Canadian site.
Kicker is that all North American servers are built out of the same plant in Texas, only difference is they have to ship the server to Canada yet the CDN price was 2x more expensive then the US..
Jamie Likely - December 9, 2005 2:49 pm
You prob have no idea who i am but i know most of the silverorange crew (Dan, Daniel, Steve, Nick)
I am working in the US now and will be coming home to PEI for a visit in Feb. if you still have not bought a camera and want to save some money, let me know and we can work something out if you want.
have a good one. I am doing this for Dico as he wanted to save some money as well. I believe if i send it to you as a "GIFT" you will receive it with out much of a cost. I will be sending Dico's camera next week so i will know for sure.
Jamie