When we first became Canon Professional Service (CPS) members, we were overwhelmed! (Here is a post that explains more about the memberships) There wasn’t much guidance on what we needed to do and we felt pretty insecure sending in our gear! Now, a few years later we feel so confident sending in our gear every single year! If I can remember right, we spent the first year asking a photographer friend how to do this but unfortunately, not everyone has a friend they can ask! Let us be that friend for you! If you are new to this and this blog post doesn’t answer all of your questions about using CPS, simply email us at hello@caitlinandluke.com Ok, let’s dive in on how to ship your gear using Canon Professional Services (CPS)!
Decide what needs to be cleaned
The first thing you do after you have set up your membership is to decide what gear you are going to send in first! This is important, if you are sending gear in you need to make sure you understand your plan fully! Here is a blog post on the details of each plan. We are on the Platinum plan now but we have been on every paid plan they offer! Since we are on the Platinum plan, CPS pays for our shipping both ways and it’s overnight shipping!
Shipping costs alone each year cost around 25-30% of our annual cost so that’s a win in our book! On the Platinum plan, the gear will get there in 1 day and it will take 1 business day for them to look at our gear! As long as there are no major fixes we should have our gear back in 3 days tops! In most cases, we send our gear in on a Tuesday and get it back Thursday or Friday!
Something to consider…
On the lower plans it will take longer to ship and clean your gear so expect a week on the Gold plan and even longer on the Silver plan! You are probably sitting there thinking that you can only afford to be on the Gold or Silver plan! That is totally ok! We get it! Be strategic with your cleaning and do it during your off-season. For us, we always clean our gear in January or February! This is prime offseason for us so we don’t have to worry about needing our gear! The only time those lower plans will hurt you is if you happen to damage a camera in the busy season. Having to wait a week means that you will not be able to use that piece of equipment for your upcoming wedding!
Don’t forget these items
If you are a holdfast user than you know what these are! These are the rings you tether your backup to on your camera! We sent these on our cameras one year and never got them back! I know, they aren’t expensive but it’s just a pain to have to replace them! Plus you don’t realize they aren’t there until you start prepping for your next wedding or even on the wedding day itself. Just pull those off and save them in a place you won’t forget! Don’t be like me, I forgot where I put them one year!
The next thing you need to remember is to take out the extra parts that go on and in your gear! We take out all batteries and memory cards before sending our gear in. Also, remember to take off any lens hoods so that you make sure to get everything back! One year we forgot to clean out a camera and our memory card got lost somehow! Thankfully it wasn’t a necessary card! Don’t forget to check all your equipment for these items before sending your gear in!
how to package and prep your gear for shipping
Now we are on to the fun part…shipping thousands of dollars of gear all at once! Sounds completely safe right? This has definitely been one thing that has caused hesitation for us in the past, now I fit everything into a box or two! You may be more cautious than me and that’s totally fine! Feel free to ship a couple of items at a time, and if you are a platinum member all of that shipping is free!
The first thing we do in the shipping process is to place every item in a separate plastic bag! This helps prevent any unwanted moisture getting into your gear on the long voyage to the east coast! I actually bought specific Ziploc bags for this but we lost them in our move so these are just standard Ziplocs we got at Walmart!
The next thing we are going to do is wrap the gear in a bunch of bubble wrap! Here is the bubble wrap we purchased from Amazon! This might be the most enjoyable part, I don’t know what it is about the tiny bubbles! Wrap the equipment and then tape it with packing tape!
Lastly, you box the equipment and fill the extra space with bubble wrap or hard brown paper. The brown paper in the box on the right is what Canon sends the gear back in so if I’m on top of it I will save that for next time. If not, I just use more bubble wrap or those peanut things! Below are all the items we use to make sure we ship our gear safely!
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