Buying hockey equipment online
 

I was thinking of buying goalie pads (or more stuff) online, either from online stores or ebay.
Will I be charged duty,taxes, or any other additional fee on top of the shipping?

Is there a system on how it's decided whether I will need to pay additional fees or not?
I've asked around, and have been hearing different stories from different people.

ship to point roberts

from there.. its hit or miss. sometimes they dont care at all. sometimes they ding everyone

only got dinged once out of 4

It's not necessarily convenient for me to ship to Point Roberts.
Shipping price difference is only like $20, not enough to make it worth my time driving there.
Unless you mean chances of me getting charged additional fees are less if I ship to Point Roberts.

How much are the duty fee usually?

Depending on which type of courier service they use ie: UPS and FedEx. You will be dinged heavily for the brokerage fees plus HST which makes the save less significant compare to buying locally. You could refuse package when it is shipped to you and declare at customs which can be a bit of a hassle.

If you do bring back from Point Roberts, most of them, it will only be HST but no duty since the equipment is classified as sporting goods.

Hopefully this helps you out.

I bought my Vaughn blocker from goalie monkey and it was a good experience. They shipped via USPS and i wasn't charged any tax or duties. I wouldn't buy pads, mainly because of sizing issues, but anything else should be cool.

Ok. Thanks for the responses. Yeah, I was thinking would buying pads might be bad, cause they are huge.
I might be bidding for equipment, but need to know all this stuff in advance to know how much to bid as my max.
I'm just weighing my options, cause online always has more selections, but can get messy.