Help! McMaster Carr will not ship to Canada

FIRST General Forum
1

This is the email I got today. I"m trying to order 1/4" polyurethane cord but there is a lot of other stuff I want to order from them soon. I know I am using a residential address but I do not own a business. I have also heard they will only deal with “established business” whatever that mean.

“Due to the complexity of U.S. export regulations, McMaster-Carr accepts international orders only from businesses. This decision also applies to orders shipping within the United States, because it is based on the final destination of the items. We cannot accept this order or future orders.”

Any suggestions?

Ken
Calgary,Alberta
FRC 4719

2

Try MSC, Amazon Supply, Grainger, or the manufacturer of whatever you’re trying to buy.

Or order them shipped to a business address. This could be whatever institution covers your “not-for-profit status” like a school.

3

I got around this in Kingston by having one of our sponsors include us in their orders and being patient.

4

Ask McMaster for sponsorship! Talk with their customer reps and track down someone to ask/talk about adding your team to their shipping list.

5

McMaster-Carr seems to have flip-flopped on whether they will ship to Canada a number of times. In the past, it was easy to apply for an account as a Canadian organization. No issues with shipping.

Then all of a sudden they stopped taking new Canadian customers.

I heard last year they started opening Canadian accounts again, and I told a bunch of teams to get them while they could.

It sounds like they’ve stopped again?

We’ve had a McMaster account for as long as I can remember, and have a long standing account history. I would encourage any team to try and do the same.

If you are just trying to do a one-off order online, you probably won’t have success. If you call them, and attempt to set up a proper account with them first, you will probably have a lot more luck. You will need to jump through a few hoops to verify the existence of your team/organization/school, but it will be well worth it!

6

This is interesting. As of December last year, McMaster was shipping to non established accounts in Canada. I guess they’ve changed policies, again.

To echo what Shawn said, McMaster should ship to you if you can set up an account with your school as the recipient. This should be really easy to do.

7

I’ll ask The school teacher to contact McMaster Carr To set up a school account

8

This hasn’t worked in the past. Maybe it will in the future.

9

I’ve always gotten that email when trying to order an item without a business/orginization address even after they opened up to international shipments. I don’t believe it’s a policy change.

10

If this has to do with export laws or taxation, this will likely not affect the outcome of receiving as an individual. I’d be curious to find out what export issues they are encountering.

11

Getting the school PO (purchase order) system as the tag along should work. We pass all of our McMaster orders through that.

12

There are none. They’re choosing not to sell to international customers because they got burned once and they don’t want to deal with the hassle of doing it again.

13