How to self clear shipment at CBSA and avoid UPS brokerage fee

There are two conditions necessary for the procedure of self clearance at Canada customs:

• Your shipment’s value for duty is less than $1600 CAD
• You have one of the local CBSA (Canada customs) offices nearby. You may find the list of offices across Canada here: Directory of CBSA Offices where Courier Low Value Shipments Program clearances are performed.

Here is the procedure of self clearing (confirmed by CBSA main office and proven many times in practice):

• Wait while your package comes to the local UPS warehouse (where you live). You will see status in the shipment’s tracking information on UPS website. If you don’t track, so just wait for the first delivery attempt and refuse to pay at the door
• Call UPS at toll free number 1-800-742-5877, press “3” to be connected to the billing department (or other prompt by the system), and ask customer service representative to send you shipment’s invoice. Some of the representatives call it commercial invoice. Just ask for “commercial invoice” associated with your tracking number. They can send it by e-mail or fax. Please make sure they got your address correctly – ask to spell it back. They will send it right away in .zip archive to your e-mail. Shipment’s invoice has the Unique Shipment Identifier Number needed by CBSA as well. This is how it looks like (click on image to enlarge):

• Find out what is the address of your local UPS warehouse where your package is being held. Call and ask UPS if you can’t figure out. CBSA may ask for this information during self clear. For GTA (if you see “Concord” in the tracking information) the address as of Nov. 2010 is:

UPS Center

2900 Steels ave. W,

Concord, ON, L4K 3S2

phone: 800-742-5877

• Take your shipment’s invoice, address of UPS warehouse, money to pay taxes and photo ID to the nearest CBSA office. Please take the reply from main CBSA office with instructions about self clear process for the case if officers in your local office are not aware with the proper procedure. You may find their reply at UPS/FedEx Brokerage Fees – avoid scam – section almost at the bottom of the post, just between solid grey lines. Last time I visited CBSA office in Brampton at the following address:

CBSA Brampton: office 480

197 Country Court Blvd.,

Brampton, ON, L6W 4P3

office hours: 8:30 – 16:30, Mon – Fri

!! – recently address has been changed to:

5425 Dixie Rd.

• Present your shipment’s invoice to customs officer and he will do clearance for you. After paying applicable taxes and duties to the cashier you will be provided with CBSA B15 form – Casual Goods Accounting Document, which confirms that you paid all the taxes to Canada customs. B15 form looks like this:

• Call UPS and ask how to provide them with B15 form (proof that you paid taxes) in order to waive brokerage fee invoice. They will give you fax number. Please make sure that you put your tracking number of the cover page. As of Nov 2010 CBSA B15 form should be sent here:

UPS Brokerage Department

fax number: 1-770-990-1724

• After that UPS Brokerage Department should process your B15 form and waive C.O.D. charges. It may take 1-5 days. You may also try to speed up the process by calling UPS and informing them that you already paid taxes to CBSA and sent receipt to the brokerage department. Ask UPS to schedule delivery.

I have not done it with FedEx or other couriers, but procedure should be very similar.

508 thoughts on “How to self clear shipment at CBSA and avoid UPS brokerage fee”

THANK YOU for this post, saved $80 in brokerage fees.
Was assured Friday morning I’d receive the forms by e-mail within 24 hours to “self clear” my package. Monday morning I took print outs (order receipt and a screenshot of the fees UPS wanted to charge me found online by creating a website log-in) to the nearest CBSA office and was able to pay the customs / duty fee easily. Whew!
When the UPS delivery guy came I showed him my receipt and he just looked at it and said I was good to go!
The forms did come by e-mail that afternoon (note that was 3 days later, not 24 hours) but the delivery guy didn’t even ask about them, nor did CBSA.
DO NOT waste time e-mailing / calling / chatting with UPS. As soon as you find out that you’re being charged, either by FedEx or UPS, just go right to CBSA and take care of the charges yourself.

This website was a godsend when I was in a panic last week thinking I’d have to pay UPS Brokerage over $100 on top of what I paid them for shipping just to retrieve my shipment. I’ll return the favor by updating some of the info on this page based on my own experience, summarized as follows: UPS attempted to deliver the package on a Friday to my residence in Toronto when I was not home, appending the usual missed delivery notice along with a C.O.D. bill. By the time I sorted out that I would need to contact UPS Brokerage to clear this up their office was closed for the weekend (M-F 9am – 11pm). UPS Brokerage’s current (May 2023) number is 1-888-520-9090. In the meantime, I ascertained that the closest CBSA office with the service I needed (an Accounts Receivable Ledger Office, or ARL) was at Toronto Pearson Airport. Surprisingly, this office is manned 24/7 so I drove out the next day on a Saturday morning with the documentation I already had from UPS. Their address is: 2720 Britannia Road East,
Toronto ON L4W 2P7 Now, according to the CBSA agent, what I presented was not a complete commercial invoice, but she still decided to clear my shipment, duly issuing me a stamped Casual Goods Accounting Document BSF715-1 (and in so doing, determined that I did not actually owe any duty at all given the nature of the goods, but that’s another story). All in all, it was a very friendly experience, the CBSA agent was well aware of the self-clear process, and I was in and out in less than 15 minutes, but YMMV. Monday morning rolls around and I call UPS Brokerage (number listed above) right at 9am explaining that I have already self-cleared my shipment. They did not seem to understand that I could have self-cleared it without them sending me the commercial invoice, but in any case, told me to expect an email with that document soon. Within two hours I got an email from UPS Windsor International Operations (the Port of Entry) with a UPS Self Clearance Reference Page and the commercial invoice, kindly advising me that could take this to a CBSA office, even providing a link to the CBSA Office Directory, and that I should respond to the email with an image of my stamped paperwork once I have it :-) Sending the image of my stamped BSF715-1 in reply, UPS responded right away saying that they had begun processing the document and that it usually takes a couple hours for the C.O.D. tag to removed from their system. As it turns out, the tag had not yet cleared by the time the driver arrived (about 1.5 hours after my email correspondence with UPS) but I showed him my stamped CBSA paperwork and explained the situation, to which he was satisfied and gave me the package. tl;dr The process works and I ended up receiving my package in the time I would have normally gotten it (given that I missed the initial delivery)! Also, no need to fax anything anymore and UPS was very swift in responding, at least in my case. If you are in Toronto, do avail yourself of CBSA’s 24/7 office at Pearson airport, although it might be a risk showing up without the full commercial invoice that UPS Brokerage will email you (although in my case, the “mini-invoice” left at my door was sufficient, allowing me to speed up the process). Good luck! Down with scams!

Hi, Eventhough I have contacted them for the invoices and other paperwork. They still try to attempt delivery and now I am afraid they would return my package to the sender. Anyway I can stop them from attempting the delivery?

I live in Fort St James BC, I dont have transportation for now. Can i pay for the fees over the phone or online?

I requested to do self-clearance and UPS sent me the invoice only. I get packages from DHL and they usually sent an In Bond form with the invoice. Customs turned me away saying my UPS docs are insufficient. i’ve contacted UPS and they told me: “Unfortunately, I cannot provide this document as the package is already released from our warehouse and customs already released it as a low value shipment, with self clearance. To provide a cargo / bond document, it would have to be a high value shipment and I am unable to change that at this time. It is entirely up to the customs officer whether or not they choose to clear a package, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do in this situation aside from having UPS clear the shipment for you.“ I don’t want to drive to customs and then be turned away again. I’ve called and emailed them a few times. Any advice?

I’ve been clearing my own UPS packages based on this advice for two months now. In my first go around, I kept the email of the agent who sent me the paperwork and just kept returning to them to ask for future paperwork. I typically received it within 10 minutes of asking. AMAZING SERVICE! Until this week. The agent is away so I’ve had to go through the main customer call centre and general brokerage call centre. They’ve made it HELL. I’ve had two separate shipments come this week and the first was left on my doorstep before I had the self-accounting paperwork. So they wanted to charge me the brokerage fee. I disputed it and they backed off. I’m now in hour 25 of the “thanks for your request we will send the paperwork within 24 hours” and when I called the brokerage call centre, the lady said, “Oh, it’s 12:15. 24 hours will be 12:24 so wait until then.” Uh, what now? So I waited and still no documents. The driver tried to deliver the package and I had to refuse it. I feel awful for those drivers; I tried requesting a new delivery day before they even came because I knew Canada Brokerage wouldn’t send the paperwork on time based on my earlier experience this week. But I wasn’t allowed to schedule a new day until they attempted delivery and I was given a InfoNotice. Uh, what now, again? So, for those of you trying this process, it may be downright frustrating but it’s possible. I suggest once you have an agent send you the paperwork the first time, keep their personal email address and send future requests direct to them unless they tell you otherwise.