From what I gather interview times are variable as long as you get conditionally approved. Unfortunately that part is taking forever.

Luckily I have a job that has me sitting at a computer all day, so I'll be able to bang F5 on GOES site hoping for an earlier interview slot.

Yesterday was the best I've ever had crossing. 5min Southbound at Peace Arch at 2PM. No line northbound at 11PM. No tax paid, no issues with agents. All in all a win.

Two months in, still waiting for my GOES appt. :(

I'm still waiting to get my stuff back from the border!! Been 3 months......
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From what I recall from last year, the border lineups were nuts all day and all night Thursday prior to Black Friday.

It is NOT worth to hit up the Premium Outlet on midnight Friday.
- huge border lineup
- All the stores need to lineup to going inside (2+ hrs)
- Line up just to get to the stores cashier (2+ hrs)
- You will be outmatch by Richmond C-Lai & their kids.

Does anyone have an idea of what the wait times at Blaine going to be round trip Saturday at 645am and Sunday 830 am?

I just checked and it will be precisely 2 hours and 1.5 hours respectively, southbound. I will check again in a couple of hours to give a more precise time.

Unbelievable........ 6 AM and all border crossings are at 5 minutes or less. Only now is it at 15 minutes, LOL. I guess most people crossed earlier?

Either that or the Black Friday sales up here are making it not worth going south.

According to a few FB posts on my wall, the wait yesterday around 8pm was 5 mins as well. That's in stark contrast to yesterday morning, which at 7am was already north of 25 mins.

I didn't see any deals that just screamed "I have to line up at the store". I'm not one to line up for anything but the absolute best can't miss deals, so that might have something to do with it. I'm currently sitting on 1 order for 2 USB drives at 4.99 each lol. I can't seem to find anything else worth getting.

So went down last night to the outlets because my GF and her sister wanted to go. Crossed over around 11pm, crossing was a breeze. As for the outlets, the lines were long but bearable. I let my gf and her sister go to whatever shops they wanted to check out so I walked around checked a few places because I wasn't really looking for anything particular, I ended up picking up a few things from RL.

On the way back we stopped over at Kohl's and Walmart, not a huge rush. We crossed back into Canada around 10am which was a breeze.

We came down Thursday night around 8:30pm and Walmart and some other stores started their door crashers early so that when we got there it was not super busy compared to last year.
We didn't make it down to Premium outlets though.

I got my wallets back! Now I don't have to spent another $2000+ to replace them:p hehe. But I learned a valuable lesson.
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sorry for the late reply. and im not so sure..honestly i had 4 tires i went to pick up and somehow only got charged 7$ lol so i thought it may be because of the weight?

crossed at 1pm and it was 2 min southbound, northbound nexus lane was longer than regular traffic :(

it was too late to change to regular lane.

If you somehow managed to get a price break, good for you!

I went down yesterday morning. 30 min wait southbound and one car wait northbound at truck crossing. It was a good run.
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god cram it! Canadian dollar slipping down to 93 cents. WTF?

I knew I should have purchased more USD when it was lower than our buck. I bet our dollar is going down to about 85 before it flattens out.


Remember those days when our dollar dropped to 65? It wasn't that long ago.

Damn I know... Couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger on a couple of US Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals b/c the loonie is so damn pathetic...

And there are still car parts that I didn't have the funds to pick up while the loonie was much closer to par... :okay:

It was a long-enough time ago imo. 90s and 2000s babies will never know, like they'll never know about CRT televisions and dial-up. But 65 cents was almost 15 years ago.

Local retailers are likely licking their chops at the dropping dollar. Less pressure to drop their domestic prices to keep shoppers locally. Paying what would amount to be a 15% "upcharge" for US goods would need the particular items to be steals before even thinking about putting them in an online cart. Doubly worse if you get taxed at the border.

I believe around 90 cents is the psychological barrier where Canadians will stop shopping down south.

Bellingham going to turn into a ghost town again.

Even at 90 cents gas is still cheap enough down south to go there. Buying big ticket items however goes out the window.

I use cash and I thought I had enough to last me for a fair amount of time. I got it at par back when Canadian was slightly higher than USD. Should have exchanged tens of thousands, LOL.


Whatever, it gives me an excuse to bitch and whine........... why should dino corner the market on the bitchin'..............j/k.

I think there was a report last week where goldman sachs is predicting it to drop down to 88 cents and stay there for a period of time. TD and a few others are predicting it to drop to 90 by spring.
I don't think it'll go back to par for a long time

Hey all, conditions on driving I5 early in the mornings, like 6:00/7:00am? Was planning on leaving my house early!!

I'm going down to meet my family (they leave today) with my cousin and she doesn't have Nexus (boo!! But what a good cousin I am to wait in the reg line with her) and I want to get a head start.

TIA!