As the end of the summer vacation is creeping slowly towards us, some of the moms and dads might be starting to think of the back-to-school purchases for their little terrors.
Visa Canada have contacted me to let me know that they recently did a survey about back to school shopping.
It came up with some interesting facts and figures, which caught my eye because of the nature of my blog (shopping & deals)! Check it out:
- Canadians parents and students plan on spending an average of $600 online before Labour Day, with approximately 15% going towards school supplies
- Of the online shoppers who plan to make an online purchase between now and Labour Day; popular purchases include books (49%), travel (36%) and computers (31%)
- Canadian online shoppers made an average of 7.1 purchases on Canadian websites, 4.8 purchases on U.S. websites, and 0.5 purchases on international websites
I guess with the recession and all the doom and gloom in the financial world, people are looking for a bargain, and even those tech-shy folk are starting to turn to online shopping too.
Well, the main point of this post was to tell you about a service called Borderlinx, a new service which is working with Visa. I'll paste in this info which tells you a bit about it:
Borderlinx helps Canadian online shoppers take advantage of sales on U.S. shopping sites that don’t ship to Canada or are otherwise unavailable here. Borderlinx allows online shoppers to make purchases from U.S. shopping sites by providing U.S. addresses and shipping services. You can even consolidate purchases from more than one merchant and save on shipping costs. Until the end of the year, Visa cardholders will receive free registration and save 15% on Borderlinx shipping.
This could be a handy service for those of you who purchase from the US .If it's free registration anyway, you might as well check out the service!
Sometimes, you need an item that is really difficult to get here in Canada. For example, my semi-uncle wanted a special lens for a camera, and he had to order it from a US based store. The shipping to Calgary was astronomical, but he had to pay for it, as he couldn't get this item elsewhere. I guess with the likes of Borderlinx, you could work out how much it would be through them, instead of paying the international shipping charges with the original store.
Now, I haven't used Borderlinx myself, so I cannot really offer an opinion on how good their services are. Have any of you used Borderlinx or any other similar shipping service? What was it like?
Well, myus tends to be marginally cheaper than borderlinx but you can sometimes be stung still due to their unclear pricing structure. Personally I'd go with viabox, as they have the cheapest shipping fees and offer a comparable service.
L'avantage avec Viabox est qu'il est le seul transitaire a accepter les Bitcoins.