While there are many fantastic jewellers in Canada, it’s undeniable that it can be tempting to at least peek south of the border whenever buying a significant item, to check whether there might be a way to get it for a lower price.
The answer is that while you can definitely save money on occasion, deciding whether to import jewellery into Canada should be a decision based on more than just the potential cost savings.
Read on to understand everything to consider when deciding whether you should import jewellery into Canada or not
Jewellery selection
The first thing to mention is that online jewellers often have a significantly larger selection to choose from than Canadian jewellers. If you are looking for a diamond ring, they often have hundreds of thousands of diamonds available:
Or, if you’re looking for earrings, they offer you the ability to pair your choice of earring setting with your choice of diamond quality, meaning you can get the exact combination you are looking for, and dial in the attributes to fit your budget:
As most Canadian jewellers are smaller than their US counterparts, they struggle to offer such a wide selection and their online experiences aren’t quite as slick, with less customization available.
Prices
Tied up to the previous point, US jewellery retailers economies of scale, as well as the greater competition, means that their prices are usually lower.
For example, a 1 carat engagement ring is priced at $8,399 on a Canadian jeweller’s website.
This diamond ring has
If we compare this to a US retailer, the price of a ring with the same quality diamond is less than half:
This is just one example, but is indicative of the potential savings that may be available if you do decide to import into Canada.
Taxes
You may have looked at the example above and though “ah yes, but the American example doesn’t include taxes..”, and you would be correct.
But neither did the Canadian one. Once province-specific taxes are added, the different is even greater e.g. here’s the total for the ring from Charm Diamond Centres if you lived in BC:
For the US retailer, the total taxes would be around $600, although this would be paid to the freight service before the item is released to you, rather than to the retailer itself.
The other thing to know is that there is no import duty to be paid on jewellery imported from the US if it has been manufactured in the US. This means once you factor in province-specific taxes, it’s no more expensive to buy from the US.
Still, figuring out the final total when looking at pre-tax prices can be a little tricky, with often the only real way to get an answer being to add it to cart, add your address and then see the total.
The James Allen tax and duty calculator can be useful to understand how much tax you are likely to pay when importing jewellery to Canada, instead of having to go through the rigmarole of adding it to your cart, etc.
Service
The big advantage of buying locally rather than importing is that you can usually visit the retailer in person to discuss any issues. When buying online, you lost the ability to do this, but many online retailers have worked to counter this by offering significantly better service policies than their bricks and mortar counterparts.
Things to look at when considering where to buy from, either online or from physical stores:
- Return policy: ideally this should be at least 30 days
- Warrant: This should cover manufacturing defects for at least 1 year
- Resizing: If you are buying a ring, you should ideally be able to have it resized at no cost within the first year of purchase
- Upgrades / trade-ins: jewellery is expensive, and there may come a time when you want to swap it for another item. The ability to trade it in at the jeweller you purchased it from can make this process far less difficult and expensive.