No plans to ever resume shipping to Canada?

Twice since the beginning of the year, I’ve contacted LOA to see if I could get more info on whether they had a timeline for resuming shipping to Canada and if I could place an order and just pay for tracking and insurance. Both times a brief response that they don’t know if or when they will ever resume shipping to Canada. I’m really bummed about this, since I’ve been collecting LOA books for over 15 years. I understand that I just have to pay more and I can acquire them via Amazon, but I don’t see how I could get the slipcase versions .

Does anyone know of a seller (something like book depository) who sells LOAs with slipcases? Or any other affordable way around this problem? I don’t know anyone in the US who could buy and ship to me.

I am trying to find more information about a US forwarder. I'm in the UK but maybe a way would be to setup a US address with an online provider and then consolidate all your books and send to yourself. You would need to change the address on LOA to a US one to correspond with the US forwarder. Sadly, I only heard of Stackry but using their online shipping calculator seems quite expensive for a 2 kg package measuring 50by50by50 cm at over 230 GBP. If you do find another service do let me know

Yes I too am genuinely frustrated because e-commerce is back to normal mostly. I fail to see why LOA can’t get stuff north of the border. There are no oceans to cross!

My apologies for our continuing inability to ship outside the U.S. As you’ll recall, last year I reported that we had to suspend shipments because so many packages had either been returned to us or had taken months to be delivered. Those deliverability issues continue to many destinations, and the list of countries with service suspensions changes on a weekly basis; it’s a game of whack-a-mole.

We are one of a tiny number of clients in our Des Moines warehouse that ship internationally, and our volume is small—rarely more than 1,500 packages in a given year, or an average of 30 packages a week. That limits us in two ways: we don’t have enough volume to ship through many international shipping concerns (like DHL). So international shipments need to be manually and individually handled and shipped through various services offered by USPS. Combined with the need for customs forms for some countries, and GST/VAT requirements for others (including the new VAT requirements implemented by the EU this month), it’s a lot of work, and it requires a dedicated staff member in the warehouse. Our Des Moines warehouse staffing was drastically scaled back during the pandemic (and several CDS facilities were shut down for extended periods due to illness and hospitalizations), and is nowhere near fully staffed again, so there really isn’t anyone to spare to prepare non-U.S. packages for shipment.

What will *probably* happen during the next year, as things return to “normal” (we hope), is that we’ll gradually add countries/regions back in: maybe Canada first, maybe the UK and the British Commonwealth nations second, etc. I don’t have a timetable yet, and I can’t even predict the order; we have larger priorities needing our attention. But we ask for your continuing patience as we figure out how to resume operations to pre-pandemic levels.

--David

>4 DCloyceSmith: Thank you for this update, and for those on different threads. I’m sorry that it’s been so tough for LOA lately! Looking forward to resumes shipping to Canada, but can definitely see that it wouldn’t be top priority.

I wonder if there is any value in LOA to having minimum dollar thresholds at least for us in Canada. I imagine it being tasking if someone has a subscription of one book every month, eats up a lot of resource. I prefer myself making a couple of larger orders throughout the year.

>2 ironjaw:

I just looked up a package of 20 kilos at 50x50x50 centimetres from the US to Canada, and Colis Expat charge 166 Euros for DHL Express or 173 Euros for FedEx. It's not cheap, but seems more reasonable than what you mentioned. You can check prices based on weight, size and shipping company on their website. I just had a package with several heavy books and other stuff shipped from the US to Europe for 80 Euros.

I’ve decided to try Shippsy for US to Canada. Ordered 13 books. Supposed to be only $7 plus another 26 to ship from their Canadian warehouse to my home. I theoretically shouldn’t have to pay tax or customs since the books are made in US and Canada doesn’t charge tax on books. Will let you all know how it goes!

Sharing some experience: I decided to use a package forwarding service to get the LOA books I wanted (Shippsy). It took 13 days from the day I placed my LOA order to the day I received the items at my home in Canada. I paid $60 CAD for the service ($7 fee, $19 tax, which I normally wouldn’t have been charged, and $27 to have the books shipped from their Canadian warehouse to my house). Normally I would pay $20 US to ship books direct from LOA, so that’s pretty good. I got 13 books. Overall, pretty happy with my experience. I probably wouldn’t use them often because I’d worry about returns in cases of damaged books. But I really wanted my LOA books!

Thanks for sharing. The cost of $60 hurts but it’s a method that works!

>10 gatsby61: it's less than $4 US per book. Lots cheaper than buying books from the FS in the US.

>10 gatsby61: $60 CAD is about $40 USD, and normally would have paid $20 USD so I thinkhh bc it’s pretty reasonable. Doing this was actually cheaper than buying the books from Amazon AND I got the slipcases. Mind you, I only avoided paying duty bc the books were made in North America.

Not stirring the pot here, happy it worked and I might have to think about it as an option.

I am glad it worked. I will look up what the cost to the uk would be

I was looking at trying Shippsy. My understanding is you are given a USA address and the $7 fee basically gets it across the border. On LOA website they want the billing address info so how do I work around that? Just skip to PayPal?

>15 gatsby61:
The issue is shipping, not billing, so the billing address shouldn’t matter to LOA. They ask for it so your credit card can identify you.

>15 gatsby61: I just use the ship pay address as billing and it still lets me pay. I find shippsy is pretty good for LOA orders.

Okay thanks,I was curious if the credit card would get rejected because the billing address does not match what is tied to the card itself.