Quote:
Originally Posted by Armaegis 
As a Canadian, I typically don't order online as shipping rates become prohibitive. So when I saw the black Friday sale with free shipping, I jumped on the chance to get some headphones from their blowout sale. I double checked their shipping page, and sure enough it said free shipping to Canada on orders over $98.
So then a day later I get an email saying that the package is too big and they'll have to Fedex it for $50. Excuse me? That's a load of bull.
Being an easy going sort, I reply back saying this is unreasonable, but I'll compromise and continue the order if they cover half the shipping. 24 hrs later, no reply, I send another email. Another 24 hrs later, no reply, I send another email. The next day, I get a message which is just a repeat of their first one with no additional explanation. I am most displeased, to put it mildly. I fire off a rather lengthy email this time around, and finally get a reply that they will cover half the shipping.
Now that I look at it though, by the time I add up the shipping, taxes/duties, dollar conversion, plus the inevitable brokerage fees (another reason I wanted to avoid fedex in the first place), I don't think I'll have actually saved any money. I'm feeling the pangs of buyer's regret already and probably should have canceled my order, but we'll see what comes.
tl;dr - free shipping apparently does not mean free shipping
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Hi Armaegis,
We are very sorry you never got a response for your first email but we have no record of the first one and it could be because we were trying to catch up with all the emails that were sent between last Wednesday's night, right before Thanksgiving, and Monday morning. It was a huge amount of emails during the holidays here in the US so we apologize we took more than 24 hours to respond.
Earphone Solutions offers free shipping to our Canadian customers on all orders above $98 with the exception noted below in red which is posted on the site.
Unfortunately the headphones you purchased from the BLACK FRIDAY exceeds the weight allowed by the US Postal service we have contract with so the only way we could ship the headphones was FedEx.
The dimensional weight on that package is 8 pounds. The actual FedEx cost of shipping these headphones to your address will be around $75. If you live in what FedEx considers "extended delivery area" (most everywhere aside from Canada's major cities) there is a $20 surcharge on top of that.
We apologize again and we have made it more obvious on the site, besides the information in red at the bottom, by adding the info on the product page.
98% of the products continue to be offered to our Canadian customers with free shipping on orders above $98 that fall under the "less than 1 kilo" rule.
The headphones you purchased are sold for $199 (Shure SRH840). You got them for $127. To compensate you further for the inconvenience, instead of shipping you one of the open box items, as disclosed on the product description, we were sending you a brand new, factory sealed unit.
Like I mentioned before, the actual shipping cost will be around $75 and we thank you for contributing $25 towards that. In the end we are losing money in the transaction with hopes that you would be happy with the final outcome. We tried our best and we are sorry if that wasn't enough.
Unfortunately the taxes, brokerage fees, duties and everything else that the carrier and the Canadian government charges their citizens are your responsibility.
I have asked the shipping department to pull your package from the dock so that it will give you a chance to decide if you still want them or not.
Please let me know via email if we should ship your order tomorrow or cancel it and credit your card right away.
Thank you for the business and understanding.
For your reference, as posted on the "INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING" page:The mail option is valid only for shipments of less than 1 kilo => usually no more than 2 sets of earphones. If you order more than 2 sets or the order is more than 1 kilo, we have to ship your order via FedEx.
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