When bike touring internationally, you're often advised to take pains to bring the bike with you on the flight. It's certainly not a sure thing.
Pros:- the bike for the most part is going on the same path and same schedule
Cons:
- airlines have differing rules for what you can check in, and varying fees for large heavy boxes.
- air travel policies are always changing, so publishe advice is always going to lag behind
The alternative is really expensive shipping, compounded by potentially tricky customs situations.
In the recounting below, I'll list dates in bold to give you a sense of how things progressed. Obviously, getting your bikes to your start point on time is critical.
Our tour was slated to start from Jasper, Alberta on July 31st.
Mid-May
I contact bike shops in Japser about receiving our bikes and building them up in anticipation of our arrival. There are two shops that I can get ahold of, and one seems more legit. After some back and forth, I get a tentative agreement to receive 3 bikes in the last week of July to be built up by 7/31.2 bikes are shipping from Boston; 1 is coming from Atlanta.
Mid-June
I check with my local bike shops about packing up the bikes and doing the shipping for us. Both shops adamantly refuse to ship to CA, citing unpredictability with Customs as the main sticking point. So I know that I'll have to take care of getting shipping myself.We consider the following options:
A. ship directly via standard shipping services (FedEx, USPS, UPS, etc.)
B. ship using BikeFlights as a middleman
C. check in as baggage
For the shipping options, we'd ship to a bike shop and have the bikes built up, waiting for us.
For the checked-in option, we'd build up ourselves once we arrived in Jasper. At this point in my bike maintenance career, there's no fear of assembling the bikes; it's just a few hours' time to factor in.
On our prior tour, it had cost about $100 per bike to ship from Boston to Seattle. In my head, I expect that to be about double to ship to Canada. My gut was that Option C would somehow be more expensive than that. So I pursue A and B.
BikeFlights conveniently has a dropdown for various bike box dimensions. The Touring Bike option is 56"x10"x32". I decide to use that size as a comparison point when shopping.
USPS was right out -- it refuses those box dimensions for shipping to CA.
I'd read in a couple of places that UPS was the roughest on packages. Having no hard data but not wanting to take any risks with our rides, I didn't look further.
So down to FedEx and BikeFlights.
Using 56x10x32 and 60lbs (very generous, even including box weight), I got the same prices from FedEx's shipping calculator and BikeFlights. I took this to mean that BikeFlights was going to use FedEx as the actual courier.
BikeFlights lists the shipping option for its estimate as "7 Day Ground." In subsequent calls with BikeFlights reps, I think I heard "International Ground" used for this option. In any case, this was all the same thing -- FedEx International Ground.
At this point, I have the full shipping plan specced out:
1. local shop packs bikes
2. bikes picked up by FedEx via BikeFlights
3. Jasper shop receives bikes and builds up
Keep step 3 in mind.
6/30
I go ahead and make a reservation with my local shop to receive both Boston bikes on Tuesday 7/5 to be packed and ready by Friday 7/8. Naturally, I ask for 2 boxes.7/5
Drop off both bikes.I follow through with my order on BikeFlights to set up shipping and pickup for Friday. The price hasn't changed since a few weeks ago.
Here (and everywhere else previously), I set the value of each bike to $500. If I recall, one of the estimators placed a special exception on items with declared value over $500. I decide in the case we have to buy new bikes to tour, the gap in value is an acceptable risk.
Later that night, I get an email from BikeFlights asking for more information to finish setting up the shipment.
What is your shipping purpose? Please choose from the following:
Sales and Purchases: Applies if you bought or sold the item(s) you are shipping.
Gifts: Applies if you are shipping a gift.
Warranty Returns and Repairs: Applies if you are sending item(s) back and forth for repair, return or warranty service.
Personal Effects: Applies if you are shipping these personal items because you are travelling or moving.
We noticed you have chosen a Ground shipment between the US and Canada. When you ship a bike or gear for personal use between the U.S. and Canada while on vacation and travel, Express services such as International Economy or Priority must be used for your shipment. Ground shipments may only be used for Commercial shipments such as sold items, repairs/returns and gifts.
In red text is where it starts going downhill.
I definitely recall there only be one shipping option available when I set up the order.
I reply to the email, stating that the bikes are personal effects and asking how I should select the other shipping options, given that I couldn't from the website.
7/6
I talk to a local FedEx office about my shipping options through them. They sound less sure about what I need. They hand me their Commercial Invoice form. There's like 50 fields to fill out, and the folks in the store don't profess any expertise in how to fill it out. They make it clear that they don't know what happens once the package arrives in CA and enters Customs. What fees will be charged, etc.Still not having heard back from BikeFlights, I call them up. Apparently, they didn't get my reply. I send it again, and the rep confirms that she sees it.
I get her help walking through setting up the order the way it needs to be. So she tries to set it to International Express (the cheaper of the two valid options). The reason I never saw other options is because International Express and Priority disallow boxes larger than 52x9x29.
The BikeFlights website failed me here by not asking about the nature of what I was shipping*.
I ask the rep to quote me 2 52x9x29 boxes (a standard road bike box size). Just under $500. Ok, up from $400, but I can still stomach it. I also get a quote for those two boxes and a smaller box for wheels, if the shop can't keep it to just two. $600. Ok... now it's getting way more than I expected.
I call up the shop and break the news. I tell them to try to get it in 2 52x9x29 boxes, and to put the overflow into the smallest box they can. The shop is confident they can do it in 3 boxes, but doubts it for 2.
* Now that I look at the shipping page again, I see this warning when I try to reproduce what I did:
"Alert U.S. and Canadian Customs only permit sales, repairs and gifts to ship Ground. You must select Int Economy or Int Priority to ship your bike as personal effects when traveling."
I don't recall that warning from before; it might have been there. I think it'd be much more appropriate to provide a dropdown to pick between personal effects or commercial and to flat out reject an attempt to use International Ground for personal effects. That would have spared me a lot of trouble.
7/7
The shop calls and confirms they found the boxes and can get it done with 3 boxes, though given the size of my Soma Cazadero tires, the 3rd box will still be 52x9x29. Yeesh.I call BikeFlights again.
I ask the rep if, given how much this is going to cost, if everything is going to work. If, because BikeFlights has specific experience with shipping bikes all over the world, that they know how to deal with declaring things properly and filling out forms appropriately. She reassures me that the process BikeFlights uses works and that they will work on the customer's behalf dealing with customs.
Comparing the seeming lack of knowledge from FedEx (though it was just branch employees) and the confidence of BikeFlights, I decide it makes sense to pay more by sticking with BikeFlights to make sure there's no problems at Customs with my shipment.
International Express happens to be 5-day shipping, so I have the rep push back the pickup date to Monday 7/10 to give the shop more time.
The rep oks the new shipment setup and says she'll send me a new order that afternoon instead of modifying the old one. She stresses that I should fill out documents and send in my passport information that evening if possible.
In the evening, I look for an email from BikeFlights confirming the new order and new documents, but I don't see anything. I reply to my old order email thread just in case.
7/8
Having not heard from them, I call BikeFlights and get a different rep. She confirms that there's notes in my existing order to make the new order, but that the rep didn't follow through on that work. I get pretty pissed when I hear that, especially in the context of being told I would be taken care of and guided through the process.This new rep finishes the reorder work, and I get the new order and the documents in email.
What I need to fill out for BikeFlights is their Personal Goods Form. When I read through it, my face darkens a bit. It's basically field-for-field the FedEx Commercial Invoice form, with some extra fields for things like itinerary and photos of your bikes. Yesterday, I was like, BikeFlights knows what they're doing, they have a special recipe for minimizing trouble with FedEx. Now I'm like, if I'd seen this form earlier, I'd have known they're just copy-pasting into FedEx forms.
I call once more. My sole question is whether I need to declare the fact that I, the shipper, don't own both bikes that I'm shipping, and whether I should provide my friend's passport information. I want to be 100% honest with Customs.
This rep hems on it a bit, initially tells me to put my friend's info on the forms, and then decides it'd be less hassle/fewer flags raised if we go with just my info. My confidence that BikeFlights has all the expertise is at a new low. The only consolation is that they're open Saturday and Sunday, so I can bug them if something else comes up.
I fill out the Personal Goods Form and email it back to BikeFlights. I include:
- just my passport info, not my friend's
- pictures of both bikes. The bike shop offers to let me pack stuff more in there, but I'm so paranoid at this point of getting caught out somehow that I refuse. So the two pictures accurately show everything in the boxes
- day by day schedule for our tour, noting that we are following a prescribed route but that it is an unguided trip
7/9
I get the FedEx shipping label PDF in BikeFlights email in the morning. Looking at the contents removes any doubt that the Personal Goods Form and the FedEx Commercial Invoice are the same thing.I get 3 shipping labels for each box, and then supplemental information to go behind the master label. The shipper will open up the clear plastic envelope and work with the forms over the course of the shipment, apparently.
I bike over to the shop to hand them the labels. The 3 boxes are ready, and the shop lets me slap on the envelopes and labels myself.
The friend in Atlanta is thoroughly discouraged from shipping, having heard about what's been going on with my shipment.
In talking to him previously, we'd weighed canceling the shipping order and flying with the bike boxes. I'd passed on that because I didn't have enough details to know if that'd be a safe choice.
By now, with the shipment already scheduled, it might still be possible to ship only some of the boxes just to cut down costs, if checking in one box on the flight might defray costs.
But recall step 3 above: Jasper bike shop builds up the bikes. If we took some boxes on the plane, the shop wouldn't be able to build the bikes up. They'd just be stuck holding our boxes until we showed up, maybe charging a token storage fee. My honor wouldn't let me consider that as an option.
7/11
Monday comes. I don't hear anything from the shop, but I'm not nervous.7/12
I check the FedEx tracking number and see that not only have the bikes been picked up, but they're already in Memphis.7/13
Email the Jasper shop to give them a heads up that the bikes are coming. Neglect to mention that it's just 2 now.7/14
In the morning, I get an email from a FedEx CA representative:Please advise if these bikes were fumigated prior to shipping. Please advise what event these goods are coming into Canada for. Please advise if these goods will be shipped back to you after the event.This is the very first time I've heard anything about fumigation. Once again, my ire is directed at BikeFlights. They're supposed to help me with this stuff. I hate getting caught off guard.
I spoke to the recipient, and they are not aware of this shipment coming into their location for you. At this point, we cannot clear these goods through Canada Customs.
Further down in the email is part of the back and forth between this FedEx agent and BikeFlights. I can't quite make out what's going on, but it seems that in some cases, the owner needs to clear the goods in person at Customs. In others, it's ok with proper paperwork for the shipper to clear on the owner's behalf. This line sticks out:
"It is against Canada Customs regulations for any broker to clear personal effects shipments."
I reply back to the FedEx rep, being vague about the fumigation thing, and saying that I would check with the bike shop what was going on.
Anyways, I call up the Jasper shop. They say an hourly employee must have answered, because they did see my email that the shipment was coming.
I see this email back from the FedEx rep:
Do you have the name of the bike tour? Do you have a contact name at Vicious Cycle? When does the tour start?I decide to just call the rep. The FedEx phone system warns that it's for employees only, but when I get the rep, she doesn't seem to mind and knows it's me when I bring up the bike issue.
I will have to check with Canada Customs in regards to the type of importation, to see if we can clear the shipment on your behalf. When goods are shipped as personal effects, Canada Customs’ regulations state that the recipient is to self-clear through customs in person, and brokers are not allowed to clear them. That being said, this is not just personal effects – like luggage that was left behind while on vacation out of country.
I clarify that our bike tour is not part of any organized commercial trip. Not sure if she cares, but want to be precise. I also tell her that I have an itinerary† that I can give her, which she wants. I email it to her, and she looks it over. I point out that we'll be crossing the border back into the US on bike, just in case that's relevant.
I also mention that she could call the shop and ask for the guy who's been handling my reservation. She asks why the bikes are going there, and I explain that we want the bikes to be built up and ready to ride when we arrive in Jasper.
At this point, she's pretty comfortable concluding that in fact the bikes will be used for the tour in a travel/vacation capacity, and not being sold or something. So she's going to follow up with CA Customs and try to get it cleared.
† At the time of the call, I was pissed that BikeFlights had asked me for that info, but yet it still hadn't made it into the right hands. Looking back at the back and forth between FedEx and BikeFlights, it seems like BikeFlights had atttached all those docs, but the FedEx rep didn't want to see them, because of the aforementioned self-clear in person policy. So if she had opened those docs, perhaps she would have known what the deal was.
After hanging up, I forward the FedEx email to BikeFlights and ask about the fumigation thing. BikeFlights acknowledges and says they will try to get that form, which must come from CA Customs or maybe CFIA (which I saw in the back and forth) - Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
I look at the tracking page, and it's lit up with red all over:
In the afternoon, I get this from the FedEx rep:
Your shop as the receiver did not matter to Canada Customs, so I did not call them.Such a relief. I still need to inquire about whether any duties were actually imposed. My understanding is that personal effects stuff might not be levied.
The good news is that since the shipper provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes, we did not have any further delays about payment, and Canada Customs has released this shipment. It will go out with tomorrow’s deliveries, but may not get to Jasper until Monday or Tuesday.
Later that afternoon, I get called by my local shop, saying that FedEx had called them and left a message about my package. I was a tiny bit worried that there was still some loose thread despite the FedEx rep saying it was all good.
At night, the tracking page showed that things were cleared up and back on the move.
7/15
No update on the tracking page.
7/18
After regularly checking the tracking page all weekend, I finally see this in the afternoon:
General conclusions
While I found BikeFlights staff to be generally pleasant, their responsiveness and knowledge about shipping to Canada (as that's all I have experience with) was pretty unsatisfying. Nothing that I'd hoped to gain from using them really went that smoothly. Armed with a FedEx Commercial Invoice and the completed FedEx shipping labels for this shipment, I'm confident I could reproduce whatever settings BikeFlights deems to be the safest for clearing Customs.Things I should follow up on:
- fumigation?
- on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects?
- duties applied in this scenario
The whole process not only generated a ton of stress, but cost waaay more than I expected. I moved down the shipping path because the initial estimate showed about what I was willing to pay. The final cost was maybe $300 on top of what we were planning.
Having read more on checking bikes in as baggage, this seems like a much more attractive option. Even if it cost about $200 per bike, that's still a damn sight cheaper than shipping like how we did.
Followups
From FedEx CA:
From BikeFlights:> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? did they decide the bikes didn't count as personal effects?
The bikes were declared as personal shipment for temporary importation to be returned to USA by the person importing them.Cool, so the itinerary was important and ultimately made a difference. The personal shipment for temporary importation status was what I needed; I wish that BikeFlights had helped more with that.
We can clear personal shipments, but not personal effects for permanent importation into Canada. There are immigration and status questions which need to be addressed by Canada Customs to the person permanently importing goods. Since you advised me you were riding the bikes back to USA, and I provided that email as your promise to Canada Customs that this was what you were doing, they approved the temporary importation of this personal shipment.
> do you know what duties they decided to apply?
The shipper declared the bikes as US manufactured, so there were no duties, just GST (Goods and Services Tax) of 5% of the Canadian value conversion, which was taken care of by the shipper’s account.
So there is a CAN personal effects form which we have found does not apply to most of our customers. As far as "fumigation?" Im not sure this is the right word here. We supplement our own personal effects form instead of the given Personal Effects for for Canada.
> had you heard about this fumigation requirement before? Did you end up getting any forms?
1) Yes we have of course heard about the form but as mentioned it often doesnt very well apply so we supplement our own, with a high degree of success.
> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects?
2) We set FedEx as the broker for out shipments, again with a great degree of success. We recommend shipping to a residence or business location which does NOT have its own clearance agent as sometimes this can confuse Can. customs; addresses to avoid include hotels or very large businesses.
> "The good news is that since the shipper provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes." Are those duties charged to me, or to BikeFlights?
3) We set all international shipments to have any applicable duties or taxes assigned to the recipient. While we are available to assist with clearance ultimately this duty lies with the recipient.Dunno what to make of the non-answer about brokers and personal effects. FedEx's answer was more concrete, as it describes exactly what CA Customs actually oked.
Another rep from BikeFlights (the way they set up their Zendesk ticket system and the way they respond means I had several emails going with them):
> had you heard about this fumigation requirement before? Did you end up getting any forms?
1. Fumigation requirement usually comes from foreign countries when they believe soil may be present on items and might carry unwanted bacteria. I have never seen the requirement from the Us to Canada, but Customs Officials may have originally requested it after being confused with paperwork or not receiving all the paperwork.
> on what basis did CA Customs approve the shipment, if generally they don't allow brokers to clear personal effects shipments? do bikes not count as personal effects?
2. Bikes do count as personal effects, and usually comes down to the value. It is possible a wrong value or misinformation was taken by Canada Government officials on this package causing strange delays. Often, they view high value personal effects has commercial items. This could be one explanation, however, we did not receive one from Fedex.
> "The good news is that since the shipper [BikeFlights] provided their account number for billing the duties and taxes." Are those duties charged to me, or to BikeFlights?
3. Since the Item is personal effects and the proper paperwork was provided, the duties & taxes, if any are charged to BikeFlights Account. For Personal Effect shipments, our policy now, is that we absorb that charge. You will not be billed further for this package.
This one was much more informative. I followed up about what FedEx said about personal shipment for temporary importation, to see if that's what I (or anyone) should use down the road.
Someone at BikeFlights finally linked me to this about international shipping: https://www.bikeflights.com/international_bicycle_shipping
Pretty good coverage of what the case I needed. Wish I'd read that before. Though still no substitute for making it clearer that non-commercial shipments require International Express.
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