I live in Edmonton, and had mine shipped to Montana Shipping Outlet in Sweet Grass, MT.
For GST, I paid $134.09 CAD on $2681.79 CAD declared value for my Basic.
Streamlining suggestions…
Canada to USA: If you have lots of items, when asked “What are you picking up?” make sure that you KNOW – because American border agents are rude as hell. I had various individual orders of “doesn’t ship to Canada” Amazon stuff, along with my 'forge, waiting for pickup.
I could tell right away that this was going to be a PITA because the US Agent had a scowl and very unpleasant demeanor going for him. Maybe they think this helps. No idea.
US Agent: Turn off your radio and put your car into park. What is the nature of your visit?
Me: I’m picking up various shipments they wouldn’t ship to Canada.
US Agent: What are you picking up?
Me: A laser engraver, plus various Amazon orders.
US Agent: A laser engraver!? Is that for personal or business?
Me: Personal
US Agent: What sort of stuff from Amazon?
Me: (struggling to remember) “Uhh, some masking tape, a blade shaver, a charcoal filter, a fan… uhh” (struggling to remember more) “…I have the receipts right here if you’d like.”
Apparent this was too much difficulty for him, because this is where he 'roid raged.
US Agent: (raising his voice) NO, I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOUR RECEIPTS, I WANT YOU TO TELL ME.
Me: Well I can’t recall everything on the list. It’s all written down.
US Agent: Is there anything else?
Me: Nothing else that I can remember. So that’s about it.
US Agent: Are you going any further south than Sweet Grass?
Me: No. Just in and out.
___
US to Canada: I can’t even think of any part of anything bad. Seriously. I rolled up, and Officer Finley was smiling.
Finley: Welcome back. How long were you out of the country ?
Me: Like, 30 minutes? I was just picking up some stuff in Sweet Grass.
Finley: Heh. Okay. How much stuff?
Me: Oh, I’ll have to declare. It’s well over a daily limit.
Finley: Okay. How much would do you estimate it’s worth?
Me: About 3000 Canadian? Roughly.
Finley: (scribbles down on a sheet) Okay. Just pull into the side and take this into the Traffic desk.
Before I went down, I had looked up the tariff codes of all the Amazon stuff and wrote them down. This helped when I went to pay. I had my Amazon receipts, handed them to the officer, and she called up the tariff codes to compare them to. She was confused by the “plastic blade scraper” used for removing labels. I classified it similar to a “household plastic cutting knife” because it was entirely plastic, without any metal. She just went with “Plastic, miscellaneous, other”.
She handed me my Casual Goods Accounting Document, and had me go to the cashier to pay.
So all in all, I’m glad I picked it up rather than having it re-shipped from the border. If UPS damaged it on the way to Sweet Grass, I would have paid for a second shipper to ship me a broken unit, and then had to pay for it back to the US for replacement. I just checked three things before accepting: a) is the laser tube intact? (it was), b) are the tempered glass panels intact? (they were) and c) is there coolant leaking inside the unit? (there wasn’t, and the unit was plastic bagged)
As @johnse noted, using a second shipper loses you the ability of knowing for sure who might have caused the damage. So I’d either use one shipper (wait for Glowforge to start International shipping), or pick it up yourself from the border.