Some sad news came this past Monday from RightStuf – easily the best source of anime/manga merchandise in English online – they’ve increased their free shipping minimum for Canadians to $250.
Before now, Canadian shoppers were required to purchase $150 worth of merchandise to qualify for free shipping. While it was quite a bit of money, it was still a very easy threshold to reach when you got started in their vast library, or went into shipments with a couple of friends. An additional $100 though is substantial. It also pushes purchases to a point where Canadian Customs is pretty much guaranteed to tax you heavily, adding an easy $100 minimum extra onto every order you purchase (I say from several experiences).
While increased costs for them leading to this is an understandable reason, it’s still a real shame to see such a huge increase to us. It will definitely affect how much I purchase from them because I can rarely afford purchases that large, or risk the massive additional customs fee on top of them. RightStuf does note that they are “currently looking into alternative Canadian freight options, and we are doing our best to find an economical solution that continues to provide reliable service”. Your Canadian consumers have their fingers crossed, RS!
You can read RightStuf’s shipping prices for Canadian orders that do not reach the $250 threshold on their Shipping Info page which begins at $10.50 for the first item.
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I was really disappointing to hear this. I know a few times Customs taxed me about $25 for a few of the shipments, and I felt that was expensive but still purchased from RS because they had the best prices and customer service. Hopefully they figure it out soon.