[s-cars] Looking to order rear calipers at reasonable cost

[Dave Ellis]

Robert Rossato wrote:
> If you're using a credit card a lot of places will not ship to anywhere other than your CC billing address.  Places that will ship anywhere you want are definitely in the minority.  It's done to protect from CC fraud.  If someone stole your CC and ordered a bunch of stuff and had it shipped to their address you'd probably wish the stores had refused to ship to a different address.

That used to be true, but I haven't encountered problems like that for 
about nine or ten years now.  This is because for the past several years 
both Amex and Visa have provided verification processes to protect 
against that kind of fraud.

Visa uses what they call "verified by Visa".  If you have a Visa card, 
look on the back of the card and you'll find a three or four digit 
alphanumeric value appended to your card number.  Amex uses a similar 
system.

Most companies now use that verification method over the phone or via 
the web to verify the validity of a card holder in cases where orders 
have different shipping and billing address (you'll notice most 
businesses provide the ability to place an order with different billing 
and shipping addresses, AutohausAZ included, on their web sites).  The 
service is offered for free by the CC companies to businesses who use 
their services already.

I deal with on average about twenty-two different companies in the U.S. 
for various things every year, and all but one use one version of the 
system or other, and all have no problem shipping to my UPS mailbox in 
Ogdensburg NY.

> If you want to order from them and have them shipped to the US address you use I would suggest paying them in a different manner, such as a money order.

Unfortunately they were unwilling to take any sort of money order or 
bank draft from outside the U.S, even if drawn on a U.S. bank.  They 
just didn't appear interested in dealing with an order from outside the 
U.S. at all.

The guy I was speaking with made it clear that they couldn't care less 
and just didn't want to be bothered.

> As for the exhorbitant shipping charges, you can thank UPS for that.  I refuse to use them for any international shipping.

UPS is the worst, I'll agree.  But all of the shipping companies charge 
stupid expensive prices for shipping from the U.S. to Canada compared to 
shipping within the U.S.  And they all charge exorbitant brokerage fees, 
with UPS taking the crown.

To avoid all that (and to often take advantage of free shipping within 
the U.S. many companies offer), I drive across the border, declare my 
goods at customs, and self-broker the goods back myself.  The forms take 
about 30 seconds to fill out and I'm usually in and out within a matter 
of minutes.  Customs charges or duty is usually $0 and I only have to 
pay federal taxes.  With the shipping companies I have to pay provincial 
and federal taxes, even upon the brokerage fees!

> Frankly I find AutohausAZ to be great and would definitely recommend them.  Never had any problems with them.  

This was the first time I tried using them, and from my experience I 
would never recommend them to anyone.  The attitude of the person I was 
speaking with there was not good.  The guy was bored and unhelpful, and 
it was clear he didn't care or wish to make any effort at all to retain 
my business (a fairly sizable parts order).

So I've voted with my feet and have already placed the rest of my order 
elsewhere with two of their competitors (who had no problem at all 
shipping to a different address) and am now just looking for a source 
for reasonably priced rear brake calipers.

For the satisfaction of NOT giving AutohausAZ my business after my 
experience with them I was quite happy to pay the few dollars more their 
competitors were charging for the same parts.

-Dave