Beef - WTC price gouging Canadians

[Vraille Darkfang]

Maybe there are risks we don't know about or understand with doing business across international lines.

Certainly there may be tariffs on some categories of trade goods, maybe one of them is books, fiction books or something.

DH

I know it's a pain in the kiester to ship to Canada.

My company was buying some production equipment from a Canadian Firm, so we had to ship them some of our product for testing.

Had to jump though a bunch of hoops that I'd never had to when sending across the US.

The biggest one was "Value of Product"; with a Little note saying how we'd have to pay more to cover taxes and import duties on it.

Thankfully, the product (we make snack foods) was taken off the line before a Best By date was printed and thus not-eligible for sale. Thus the Product had 0 value, only being used for testing purposes.

I think a good portion of your mark-up might go into various duties and fees to make it over the border.

Some d20 or maybe White Wolf, says "Printed in Canada" Are their Canadian prices higher too?

 

[Agamon]

Remember that the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar is one of the factors listed for Guardians of Order's demise.

Yep, making the books in Canada and selling them in the US would have been profitable back in the 60 cent days. The high Cdn$ has Canadian exporters all quite perturbed.

It's funny. If I ship something to the US, it's often cheaper than shipping it to someone in Canada. It's just one example of Canada Post's stupidity.

And I agree with those that like Amazon. I just ordered Ptolus and the Colossal Red Dragon from Amazon for $150 and free shipping. At my FLGS it would have been $250.

 

[Agamon]

Some d20 or maybe White Wolf, says "Printed in Canada" Are their Canadian prices higher too?

That just means the printer is Canadian. The distributor is still American, so yes it's still more expensive.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

That just means the printer is Canadian. The distributor is still American, so yes it's still more expensive.

So they Print it in Canada.

Ship it to the US (I'm guessing at no great cost, as they need to stay competitive with other companies).

Then some of them are shipped back inot Canada & have to pay Duty taxes?

I'd think it would be easier to just keep a portion of the print run North of the Border to meet Canadian Demand & lower prices.

But, I'm no Import/Export Guru.

But, then again I have no idea if WotC has ever consulted an US-Canadian Import/Export Expert either (though I'm betting Hasbro has at some point).

 

[Wik]

Another one from Victoria here! My FLGS around here is Skyhaven Games - Michael more or less ignores the MSRP and prices things quite nicely. Yay!
-blarg

Yeah, I'm still torn between Curious and Skyhaven, here - Curious is cleaner looking (and I like clean) and has a much wider selection of games, but Skyhaven has the cheaper books and a nicer staff.... if only Skyhaven had a better distributor (I ordered stuff from them, like, three months ago, and I still haven't heard from them about it) I'd be a total regular there.

As it is, I buy most of my hard-cover wotc stuff there.

 

[13garth13]

As an ex-Winnepeger...

....heck, someone has to represent the bloody middle of the country, eh?

I remember hearing on the CBC when one of the head honchos of Chapters-Indigo (it may in fact have been the owner) was being interviewed, she dismayed that publishers are basically gouging the Canadian customer and that the cost of books has always been tied to the exchange rate, and when it goes down versus the USD they sure as shooting raise the Canajun price, but they are glacially slow to adjust when our Loonie goes up against the American dollar.

I myself (while glancing over my various paperbacks and hardcovers, both fiction, non-fiction, gaming and comic-based) can see that generally the CAN price seems to be according to the exchange rate of the time....until the last couple of years when the loonie surged up (or to be more economically precise, the US $$ took a swift plunge into the financial loo and everything else started looking better in comparison...)

Again, someone from the actual book trade would have to comment. Additionally though, I seem to recall that Paizo mentioned that their mags had been unfair towards Canucks since our dollar started to climb and only recently when they upped the US price on Dragon and supposedly left the CAN price unchanged have they taken steps to rectifiy the situation (in a manner of speaking ) Hopefully James Jacobs or Mike McCartor will step in on the whole exchange rate versus grotesque shipping fees creating the cover price discrepancy.

Cheers, (and back to lurking)
Colin

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

Maybe there are risks we don't know about or understand with doing business across international lines.

Certainly there may be tariffs on some categories of trade goods, maybe one of them is books, fiction books or something.

Maybe the companies have more liability when shipping to Canada given the different legal system.

Perhaps there are some extra fees they have to pay for the purchase of a license to do business in Canada that they pass on to their Canadian customers.

I have not run a business selling items from US publishers to Canadians in Canada but I can only imagine that there are some laws on the books that Canada uses to encourage Canadians to purchase things from Canadian publishers and to spend their Canadian dollars inside Canada.

All countries stack laws in favor of their own native businesses. Please don't take the following as a political commentary, but I'd wager a country that is more left leaning and socialist as Canada is , unless I am mistaken, does it a lot more than some more free market economies.

This is a complex international business decision motivated by the desire to make money as is the bottom line with all companies that do business anywhere.

International business is a multi-faceted and highly complex thing with variables unique to not only each type of business but each specific company, product and even each separate contract within the same company based upon the existing laws at the time of its origin.

I would highly doubt that a company is charging Canadians more as some sort of plot to limit access to gaming materials or to exploit the Canadian customers through deceptive exchange rates and trade practices.

I think they probably just have to pass on some of the higher costs of doing business internationally to the customers who reap the rewards and benefits of their products availability outside the boundaries of their home base, which is in this case the wonderful country of the United States of America.

Food for thought...

DH

Tariffs? Not for nearly 20 years now, due to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The only duties paid for importing books into our fair province are the General Sales Tax of 6%, and I'm not certain if that applies to retailers or only to final customers.

 

[Shawn_Kehoe]

Incidentally, I did contact WotC about this a while back. My email was as follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good afternoon,

My name is Shawn Kehoe, and I have been a regular consumer of both Wizards of the Coast and TSR products for over a decade. I am writing in order to bring attention to the gross discrepancy in Wizards of the Coast's Canadian exchange rates.

I recently purchased the Spell Compendium, which retails for $39.95 USD / $54.95 CDN. This suggests that Wizards of the Coast is employing an exchangerate of $1 USD = $1.38 CDN. However, a search onwww.xe.com shows the current exchange rate to be $1 USD = $1.16 CDN. In the instance cited above, the Spell Compendium should have been priced closer to $46.29, a difference of $8.66.

While I do enjoy WotC products, I feel that I can no longer support them while this overcharging of Canadian customers continues. I hope that a more accurate exchangerate will debut in the near future.

Sincerely,
Shawn Kehoe
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To which WotC replied:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shawn,

The price on the books are merely suggested retail prices, not prices set in stone. The stores do not have to sell it for that amount. But I will indeed pass your concerns along to the appropriate departments for consideration. We do care about the opinions of our customers.


Take Care and Good Gaming!

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Sam S.

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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Nyaricus]

You should see what Sony is doing to us in the UK for the PS3. Sony, a pound is worth about twice as much as a dollar. Therefore you don't charge the same number of pounds as dollars. Not if you want me as a customer, anyway.

Ouch, that is really crappy Morrus. I feel your pain even in Canuck dollars; those are gonna be *really* expensive for most when they hit shelves...

 

[Kaodi]

*scratches head*

In the above reply, is WotC suggesting that they sell to Canadian retailers at the more or less fair exchange of what they sell to American retailers? I guess if they answer is, " Yes " , then does that mean they are alone in this practice, or that it really is the big retailers that don't care and only go by the suggested price? I think that at my FLGS, the price is marked down around $4 vs. the suggested price.
I will be quite interested to see if WotC ever does change the suggested price (on their novels too). I have my doubts.