@pierrelebel wrote:
"I'm totally lost here!?!'
The rate increase in Light Pocket service is very high, more or less matching the rate increase in lettermail (Canada) and letterpost (USA/International)
There is a difference in timing. Light Packet rates are in effect now; lettermail and letterpost rates go into effect at the end of March.
There is also an important change in the brackets for Light Packet. Envelopes/parcels in the 100g-150g range seem to benefit from the change.
Every seller should take the time to get the new rates and understand them as they relate to their business model. Pricing adjustments may be required in some instances.
The difficulties is that organizations like Canada Post (CPC), modernized unions (not the old style kind that actually worked well), and even eBay or PBI themselves make decisions without fully understanding their ramifications, instead choosing only how the change will effect their organization internally.
Yearly changes cannot be processed by the market, they simply cannot as it takes too long to re-tool the logistics processes and to "get the hang of things" again with such changes. It's easy for CPC themselves as their own processes just remain the same but just the numbers change, meanwhile everyone else has to "understand" how this effects the market which quickly turns into a tailspin of inefficiency, consider:
1. CPC Increases rates to make up for losses
2. Sellers have to retool their processes to understand rates
3. Due to (2), shipments are not as efficient by the sellers
4. CPC's total income goes down even further as sellers (and non-ebayers) slow down temporarily
5. Go back to 1
While this may seem like "just business", it may be acceptable to a large business that has investment funds to fall back upon in hard times (often large enough businesses get preferential bulk rates for shipping so even that's not an issue at times), but for small business and individuals, steps 2 and 3 of the above can kill. Nobody at CPC understands THAT.
When you're in business as someone small and all of your business time is spent researching the market and "understanding" rates and so forth, you have no time to make and/or ship product because you're too busy with things that are almost regarded by most as force majure, as if they're handed down by a deity.
Seldom does anyone affirmatively challenge these almost force majure elements like rate hikes and so forth because nobody has the time to, so organizations responsible for these elements assume everything is okay and continue with hikes and whatnot.
Truth be told: CPC is not a deity nor staffed by any deities.
