Buying parts in Canada

[boarder115]

last time I ordered parts I got them from Mammoth electronics and there was the 20$ shipping fee and 40$ fee to cross customs. Anyway, too much money for a small amount of parts. Are there any good online stores that are based in canada?

[Surgeon]

Hey man, I'm in Quebec and haven't found any retailers for which price and quality were in a good ratio so far.

I get about 75% of my parts from Tayda, they have great prices and shipping is cheap. The only downside is the shipping times when you order with the cheapest shipping method (~ 1 month). However, they're well worth it imho.

The other 25% I get from ebay.

[rousejeremy]

+1 for Tayda.
Where are you located in Canada?

[hudsong]

Haven't had a lot of luck with Canadian sources.  I've been ordering most of my parts from Smallbear (https://www.smallbearelec.com/home.html).  The shipping charges aren't too bad.  Not great but not bad.  Delivery is pretty quick (about a week) and they ship via US post.  Therefore, no duty/brokerage fees.  

Never use UPS to ship across the border.  You always get dinged with ridiculous brokerage fees.  Other couriers are a crap shoot but UPS is always bad for this.

[smoss469]

All these fees are a joke. There shouldn't be customs fees on smaller items. I can see paying a duty tax or something similar on a luxury item like a car, or an expensive watch or other jewelry but $25 in parts? Really? The fees are more than the value of the entire order! Talk about doing their part to bleed the tax payers dry!

[jivedanson]

http://www.digikey.ca/ isn't a bad choice for Canadians -- huge selection, OK prices (more than Tayda, but less than Mammoth/SmallBear) and (drum roll) ...next-day $8 shipping for orders <$200.   You pay HST, and everything ships from the US via FedEx.  No border hassles, no delays, no hidden brokerage fees.   It's awesome.

Downside is, they don't stock some pedal building parts like stomp switches, etc. so it's not a one-stop shop; you'll still need to go elsewhere for some specialty stuff.   Also, the ordering interface is Mouser-esque, so it's very technical and cumbersome to navigate; unless you know -exactly- what you're trying to buy, you end up in the weeds very fast.  

I still use Tayda when I need a restock, but Digikey is king if I'm in a hurry, or if I'm buying enclosures -- they have pretty much every Hammond box variant in the world.  

[rocket88]

seriously phil, a month???

i order from tayda all the time, i usually get it in 3-5days on the cheap shipping. everything i've ordered comes out of colorado. i wish i could help you guys out cause that's just ridiculous.

[Jopn]

rocket88 wrote

seriously phil, a month???

i order from tayda all the time, i usually get it in 3-5days on the cheap shipping. everything i've ordered comes out of colorado. i wish i could help you guys out cause that's just ridiculous.

Yeah, anything I receive in Ottawa through Tayda comes from Thailand.  Takes about a month each time.  2 months if Canada Border agency decides that you might be trying to smuggle something in those shrink-wrapped enclosures (my last order):

[Silver Blues]

Yeah, I know how you feel... I order almost everything from somewhere on eBay, be it Tayda or somewhere else, and boxes and jacks I buy at one of the two industrial electronics retailers in my area. Takes anywhere from eight years to forever for any order to come in, which is why my builds are so far between. There isn't really a great solution for parts up here.

And yes, UPS is an absolute shit company. The amount of problems my family has had with them prevents me from buying anything where UPS is the only shipping option.

Generally buying things from the US nets you atrocious customs charges, which is a little ridiculous and never really worth it. Both times I've bought relay bypass boards from Jack Orman, as reluctant as I was to do it, I had to pay almost exactly what the product cost in shipping just to get it here. It's a fucking 1" square piece of PCB with an IC on it that weighs like 15g. I've been meaning to try and get into experimenting with Arduino and ATMega microcontrollers, so I guess now is as good a time as any to buy a kit and start programming these things myself using the project someone posted on FSB, providing I can decode the schematic onto a vero.

[rocket88]

all i can say is that's all sorts of fucked up. i just don't get it.