There is a huge fedex depot beside the train station where I park every day... the issues are apparently because of paper work, but i question it is really that much more. the one valid point they make is there is limited international demand which is apparent from the current coop sign up, but money is money and with the Canadian dollar at par with the US dollar, NOW is a great time for me to get the items that are only available in the US.
Currently, HolidayCoro does not directly ship outside the United States (all 50 states). At one time HolidayCoro did ship outside the US but after careful evaluation we have determined that at this time we can no longer ship outside the US. Customers often wonder why we would pass up on sales outside the US and here are some of those reasons why we made this decision:
Our e-Commerce solution has limited shipping intelligence. This prevents us from allowing some items to be shipped internationally (smaller, easier to ship items) but preventing other items from being shipped that maybe extremely expensive or impossible to ship (large coro based items.) It also prevents us from adjusting shipping expenses on a country by country basis (Canada being easier to ship to than France for example).
We have limited demand for international sales. When we did offer shipping to international locations, it comprised only 1.5% of our gross sales. The majority of holiday outdoor lighting is performed in the US, which is our primary market.
Additional paperwork is required when shipping internationally. This paperwork can vary by individual country. Completing this paperwork requires two to seven times more time than it does to complete a US based order. Since time is the most important asset in our business, spending more time on paperwork prevents us from releasing new designs, marketing and other revenue generating activities.
We are unable to completely meet all international requirements. Some countries require specific warranties, product certifications, duties, patent restrictions, etc. There is no way we can keep track of all international requirements that we are legally bound to do so.
We experienced a number of issues with duties - either being billed back incorrectly by our shippers for duties payable by our customers or with customers refusing orders as a result of duties they didn't expect to pay. Dealing with these issues takes valuable time.
While the US is one of the few counties still using the imperial system, we do not wish to maintain two systems of measure (metric, English / even/odd FM stations, voltages, etc) for our products.
Some of our products may or may not be compatible with items in customer countries - this includes items such as lights, voltages, plugs, sources for materials, etc.
It is exceedingly complex and expensive to replace warranty items, especially for less expensive items, for customers in foreign countries. In some cases, the cost of the warranty may exceed an item's profit many times over.
When we did offer shipping, many customers would contact us to ask for lower costs on shipping which we couldn't do - sometimes it is just really expensive to ship large packages to the other side of the world.
We would love to be able to offer international shipping to our customers but given all the issues involved, it is not possible to do so at this time.
