J. Crew drops duty from Canadian e-commerce site, cites bad publicity as cause for increase in sales
Just days after outraged Canadians noticed the massive price discrepancy between J. Crew’s online offerings in Canada versus the United States, the company has issued a release saying they will no longer charge duty on their Canadian website. On average, J. Crew in-store prices are 15 per cent higher in Canada than the United States, but online, with duties and taxes, some items rang in at almost 50 per cent more. Some might think all this would be bad for business, but as the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad publicity—we’ve been following this harrowing tale, which has led us to write about it three times in the past seven days, and CEO Mickey Drexler told the Globe he thinks this brouhaha has actually drawn more people to the store. Good work, J. Crew marketing team—we’ll think of you when we’re picking up our next cashmere sweater set.
I would actually prefer to see Duty built into the price. I always feel a sense of dread when I order, wondering how much duty will be, knowing that I am actually overpaying for the things I am buying. I paid close to $100 on 2 pairs of shoes from the U.K….and I was required to leave a cheque taped to my door?!
Open a mail box at a UPS store directly across the boarder, there is one in Lewiston and in Buffalo, these are NOT PO Boxes. We order stuff online from the US all the time, have it shipped to our US address at our UPS store (again it looks like a regular address, it is not a PO Box) and then every so often drive down and pick everything up. Then it’s up to you if you want to declare it when you come back across…..
If you order from the States and have it shipped by USPS, they almost never apply duty, only HST (plus a $5 to $8 handling fee). And sometimes a package will go through without even HST being charged (that’s a really good day!). You could order using USPS from J. Crew before the Canadian site was started, hence the uproar (exacerbated when duty was also applied!). The 15% price increase arguably already accounts for the duty, given that duty on clothes is usually only about 11% (about 18% on shoes. eeek!). Not to mention that J. Crew probably already paid duty to the U.S. when it imported the goods to the U.S., and now we’re paying duty and taxes on top of duty!