The Microbrand Store Reviews 

Reply from The Microbrand Store

Updated Jun 27, 2021

Hi Sean,

We're very happy you like your new timepiece, and we do very much appreciate your feedback, which actually shocked us. As it happens, we do indicate the import duty (0% on watches) and taxes (5%) for Canada on our web site here:
https://microbrand.store/pages/faq

The total you should have paid to UPS should have been around 5% of your total purchase price plus typically an optional nominal customs broker fee of usually around $10-$15 or so. (Optional as you can choose to handle customs yourself instead. All of the courier services usually act as the customs broker for imports, so 99% of the time, most folks just pay the nominal handling fee.)

Given your watch price was under $370 USD, a $100 customs fee sounds very wrong here. If you'd pinged us, we'd have recommended to decline accepting the delivery and have UPS hold it pending a validation of the customs charges. Did you get a receipt from the UPS driver for the ~ $100 you paid? If so, we recommend talking to UPS to see if you can get a correction and refund from them. If not, you should report that to them ASAP as, although we've never had this experience and have shipped watches in the thousands, it's possible that your driver may have pocketed some extra cash here.

Please feel free to use the live chat box on our web site at https://microbrand.store/pages/contact-us if we can help regarding providing you copies of any of our shipping documents, and thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Reply from The Microbrand Store

Updated Jun 2, 2021

Hi Martin,

Thank you for your feedback.

We see that it took you around 10 days to received your new timepiece. Unfortunately there is not much we or anyone else can do if there are delays in international shipping due to the pandemic, which is why no courier services are guaranteeing delivery times right now, and we've seen delays with every service: DHL, EMS, FedEx, UPS, etc. Pre-pandemic, all of our watches were shipped for free and with delivery typically within 4 business days, no matter the location worldwide. We hope when things get back to normal worldwide, that shipping times (and prices) return to their old levels.

During the pandemic, most of our watches are still being shipped internationally for free. For just a few countries, we do charge a shipping fee, and that is only for our cheapest watches. Even then the fee we charge is actually a fraction of the price we're paying to get your watch to you. (Your shipment cost for us was over $120 USD.) Unfortunately for those countries still with COVID-19 shipping restrictions, our international shipping costs have literally tripled, but we're beginning to see those restrictions being lifted one or two countries at a time. If you placed an order a couple of months from now, the odds are you likely would get free shipping on all watch orders, including our lowest priced timepieces.

If you'd like more information, we do explain this in more detail on our home page at https://the.microbrand.store, and go into more detail on our Covid-19 Update page. The vast majority of our customers currently do get free shipping on all watch orders, and we very much hope that we can soon return to that situation for all of our watch orders, but in the meantime we're doing the best we can under the circumstances.

Reply from The Microbrand Store

Mar 6, 2021

Thank you for your reviews and your kind words. It isn't every day a new customer comes into the store and through the course of a long and enjoyable conversation decides to buy 3 watches online all at once. We could really tell you love watches and it was an absolute pleasure for everyone here if we could help you find something that suits you that you like, so we were really excited and happy to receive your email and hear how much you are enjoying your new timepieces.