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Ordering Replica Guns From The US

Posted on by Jess Willard
11
Jul

Had an interesting email land at my door this morning. Here’s the general jist:

“I can buy the Coach Shot Gun State side for $139.00 Delivered to my house. Your price is $262.00. Why are you so much?”

We tend get this kind of question every once and a while and I think it’s important to address a lot of misconceptions with online sales.  Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate anyone who pops up and asks a questions like this … especially as there are probably others with the same questions who don’t ask.

  • Our prices are in Canadian dollars.  Right now, lets be honest – its not great.  I just checked and as of Jan 10th, 2016 for every $1 US dollar, you’d need to pay $1.42 Canadian.   I remember the days when things were close or were on par… I miss those days.   So in the above case, this good deal from the US (without looking at duties & taxes) we’d be looking at roughly $200 Canadian.
  • With ZoltanGal, you don’t need to worry about Importing fees like Duties & Taxes.   Even on a retailer level, these can be painful and costly.
  • With ZoltanGal, if your order is over $100 for replica guns, you get Free Shipping.  This just seems the nice thing to do for everyone – so by default Replica Rifles always head out for free and we absorb the $20-$30 shipping costs.  Not bad, huh?
  • Unfortunately we need to charge the 5% GST here in Canada.  That’s just paperwork but if you live in i.e. Ontario, your tax rate is 13%.  Call it a plus that we’re located in Alberta and only have the 5% GST here 🙂

And also the VERY MOST important to note, the majority of US retailers won’t ship to Canada.

Replicas (even non-firing ones) get seized at the border with customs.

While its possible this *might* make it over (I’ve heard success stories), its extremely likely that it won’t (hence US retailers not shipping to Canadian customers… they end up paying to have the item(s) returned to their US locations when it gets blocked).  In the past, I’ve helped people (not even ZoltanGal customers but vacationers who have picked these up as souvenirs) try to get out of this situation without any success.  What happens at the border?  Unless you have a US mailing address, these either get redirected to the original retailer (back at their expense) or are seized and destroyed.  <— that idea really sucks…

On our side, when our suppliers import from Spain into Canada, they need a good track history of importing replicas, have the right paperwork and everything stamped a certain way (and even then if they have someone new going over their orders, things can get delayed).

Tricky work at the end of the day.