Heads Up Canadians, Foreign Buyers. It Just Got Tougher to Deal With Jerry's Gaskets

[Erik]

As I was submitting my order to Jerry's Gaskets just now, I saw a message pop up that should cause some concern for Jerry's Gaskets Canadian and other foreign customers. Jerry's no longer will mail directly outside of the US. If you wish to buy from Jerry's, you are going to have to use a US based postal handling service.

How does this work? You will have hire a service in the US that will provide you with an US address that you can send your packages to. I've been using a company called Cross Border Pickups which works in the Toronto area, for a few years now, and it's worked well.

What's the down side? Other then an increase in cost, the biggest problem will be time. Don't figure in getting an order from Jerry's in a couple of days anymore. There will be delays caused by the service having to receive your package, log it into their system, and then send you an email that it's arrived. You've then got to fill in the paperwork for customs, pay them, wait for them to repackage your shipment, and then send it on again.

Is this the end of the world? Nope. You can still get parts from Jerry's. But you better plan ahead, because everything will now take significantly longer. Plus, there will still be more costs, as you are paying for shipping twice, and extra handling. Plan ahead for the stuff you need. Or if it's an emergency, look for places like Rock Auto, that will have you the parts in a few days.

One other thing I noticed was that often packages sent from the US, with lower values, would not be charged tax or duty if they were sent directly through the USPS and Canada Post. However, once I started using the service, then I'd pay on every order.

Will I stop shopping with Jerry's? Nope. I still put my order in after I saw the change. But I'll certainly think about it some more and plan more carefully.

[A26B]

The primary reason for the change is the extended delays for USPS international shipments, due to Covid 19 pandemic. With the drastic reduction in international air traffic, the USPS started shipping by container ships to a few terminal countries where more delays were incurred with sub-routing. It became more the norm than the exception for international deliveries to take weeks & months and tracking became impossible.

Ultimately, some international customers demanded full refunds or replacement shipments at no cost to them, leaving Jerrys Gaskets taking the entire loss, including already expensive shipping costs, due to no fault of ours.

Switching or adding more options like UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc adds increased shipping costs to international and substantial administrative expense on our side.

We were spending a great deal of time corresponding with international customers, often with some language barrier issues, trying to explain why there were delays, why we couldn?t resolve the tracking issues and when their shipment would arrive.

So, we decided that rather than discontinuing international sales altogether, to initiate the requirement for US addressed package forwarding companies. At least this way, each customer would deal with their own additional costs and hassle rather than Jerrys Gaskets having to absorb it all for everyone.
Hopefully someday things will return to normal. For the time being this is the only equitable solution that is fair & reasonable to all concerned.

[Erik]

I understand for overseas customers, but it shouldn?t be an issue for Canadians. Yes, we?ve been seeing delays on our side, but Mail from the US has not been drastically slowed. Tracking is iffy, but everything from the US arrives usually within a few days of what it would have been during pre-Covid times.

[A26B]

Originally Posted by Erik

I understand for overseas customers, but it shouldn?t be an issue for Canadians. Yes, we?ve been seeing delays on our side, but Mail from the US has not been drastically slowed. Tracking is iffy, but everything from the US arrives usually within a few days of what it would have been during pre-Covid times.

Canada was wrapped up in the entire International policy change. I will ammend our policy to still ship direct, via USPS International shipping.

[Erik]

Originally Posted by A26B

Canada was wrapped up in the entire International policy change. I will ammend our policy to still ship direct, via USPS International shipping.

Thank you, Jerry. Excellent service.

[Erik]

Btw, Haibeck is still shipping normally to Canada, and offering a few different shipping options.

[Thomas ZR-1]

Hi Jerry, I`m an international customer and for me it?s not a problem to pay higher shipping rates for FedEx or UPS to Germany. FedEx or UPS don`t have a Covid-19 problem. Maybe it takes one day longer (4 instead of 3 days). There is no question for me: I would prefer FedEx or UPS for international shipping in future. USPS / DHL is slug post!

[A26B]

Originally Posted by Thomas ZR-1

Hi Jerry, I`m an international customer and for me it?s not a problem to pay higher shipping rates for FedEx or UPS to Germany. FedEx or UPS don`t have a Covid-19 problem. Maybe it takes one day longer (4 instead of 3 days). There is no question for me: I would prefer FedEx or UPS for international shipping in future. USPS / DHL is slug post!

Thomas,
As I said in my first post "Switching or adding more options like UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc adds increased shipping costs to international and substantial administrative expense on our side."

I have investigated shipping by the major vendors described above, but we do not have high enough volume to receive significant discounts. Also, we are not a big company so we do not have integrated software in our store to prepare shipping labels direct from the order data. So we have to process an order with direct input on the shippers website and then determine whether the customer will pay extra for pickup from our location or for us to drive the the 30~40 mike round trip to take the package to a drop off point. Integrating shipping into our webstore is expensive and just not feasible.

So maybe you can see that it is just not practical from a time investment or direct cost aspect. Even if the customers said "no problem, I will pay all the extra costs" seldom are 2 different customer requirements the same.

Consequently, I hope you can see where it is better for both parties to use a package forwarding service that is set up to cope with all the different customer preferences on an individual basis. Likewise, they do get competitive rates and pickup services. It is just going to be better for our Internal customers such as you, to utilize a package forwarding service. You will ultimately have lower cost and better service than we can provide at the current time.

When things improve, we can and will return to our normal procedure. It has always been our goal to provide parts & shipping at the best possible rate and will continue to be.

[Thomas ZR-1]

Ok Jerrry thank you for the explanation. For me here in Germany is hard to understand that people in the US have to drive so far for a FedEx or UPS drop point. In my area there are those kind of drop points everywhere...in a radius of 1 mile (at a gas station, bakery, stationary shop..etc.). At least I hope the world will get the Covid-19 problem under control asap. Many governments ignored the virus much too long in my opinon.

[daniels]

I have been waiting for my fuel pressure regulator since july, hopefully it's slowly making its way to me by container ship and the usps haven't lost it.
But i just want to say Jerry's gaskets is absolutely crucial for me here in Iceland, and has helped me so much in getting my ZR-1 in perfect running order. So hopefully your shipping can return to normal once this Covid nonsense is over.