Payments / Currency

We are a Canadian company and we operate in Canadian Dollars (CAD).  If you are also Canadian, everything is relatively straightforward.  You can check out as normal and we’ll send you your product. (You checkout in CAD, you get charged in CAD, everybody wins).

If you are from the United States, then things are unfortunately a bit more complicated.  We recommend you go brew up a fresh coffee before reading on…

If we didn’t do anything fancy, then US customers like you would need to pay us in Canadian dollars.  In this case your credit card company would likely charge you a ~2-3% foreign transaction fee AND they’d charge you another, hidden ~2-3% spread on the currency conversion.  To be clear, there is nothing special here about SimmerShield specifically, this is just how the current system works.

Since everyone hates bank fees, we’ve worked hard on our end to try to prevent this.  You’ll notice that you can toggle the currency on our website and check out with either USD or CAD.  If you complete check out with USD, then you are paying in USD and we get USD, so you should not get charged the hidden currency conversion spread.

HOWEVER:  You might still get charged a ~2-3% Foreign Transaction fee by your credit card company.  If this happens to you, we’re really sorry.  We know it sucks.  But, this fee is unfortunately completely out of our control.  We can only offer the following advice:

  • If you have more than one credit card, try to use one with the word “Travel” on it.  Some of these cards don’t charge foreign transaction fees.
  • If you get hit with one of these fees, call your credit card company and politely ask them to reverse it.  We’ve personally had pretty good luck with this, but it’s hit and miss.
  • If you have any questions, please contact us.

We realize this problem creates a bad customer experience and we’re working hard to fix it.  The only solution we are currently aware of is just far too expensive and complicated for a tiny company like us.

Maybe one day!  But for now, thank you very much for your understanding.

 

Payment / Currency Policy

SimmerShield is not responsible for any foreign currency transaction fees or related costs to the customer resulting from a purchase through this site.