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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 5095728" data-attributes="member: 20741">True enough. That's the case in Canada too, even when buying from another province.But, as you say, the enforcement of that is problematic. In Canada, the taxing authorities have set up the couriers and postal service as the tax collectors for international sales and that system pretty much works very well (from a revenue / trade barrier perspective).The postal service, because it avoids the grossly excessive "brokerage fees" is the far preferable way to go. Canadians always want to have things shipped via the US Postal Service. Strangely enough, a lot of US Internet retailers don't "get" this preference. They want to ship via UPS, because UPS provides them with shipping supplies and easy to use shipping calculators. UPS picks up as well - so it's a brain dead shipping model for the US based internet retailer to use which take no effort and little start-up cost.Failing to offer USPS shipping, however, essentially costs any US based internet retailer 99% of potential sales from a Canadian purchaser. In my experience, a good portion of US retailers just don't care about this though. They've never seen any Canadian purchasers because of their shipping policies, so they imagine that there aren't enough out there to matter ( a self-fulfilling prophecy at work).Some US based internet retailers do understand the issue and accommodate it as best they can. When USPS is used and the sticker price is low, it can still be a good deal for those of us north of the border. (Sometimes, a very good deal.)I certainly do appreciate my FLGS though - and I would agree that most of the Canadian ones are better stocked than their American counterparts based upon my own anecdotal experiences.  It's not that we know how to do it up here better than the FLGS owner does  in America. It's simply that the Canadian stores operate in a different competitive environment. It's still 1994 in Canada when it comes to the retailing environment and our stores are better stocked as a result.I do appreciate that if I lived in the USA - I'd probably be buying most of my purchases online.  Awfully tough to be an owner of a FLGS in the USA, to be sure.</blockquote>

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