THOUGHT OF THE DAY - re shipping from Canada

[cottonwoodindustries]

Well this little tidbit that blew me out of the water this morning......
This note came from one of my customers from FRANCE.

A little background...
He was looking for a certain body for one of his RC cars, he thought I may be able to help......

I didn't have one, but I was able to find one
It was located in the US with one of my competitors
Here is what he wrote back......

Dear cottonwoodindustries,

Hi Loré,
thanks.
It is sold.
And the problem with US is that mail is too much long and not sure at all !
I prefer buy in Canada, It's very near french post delays and security.
If you have one of these body one day, tell it to me if you remember.
Best regards from west of France were summer is very hot and blue this year !
Jean-Paul SANCHEZ

There is a little bit of a language problem, but you get the idea......

So not all things are what they appear......some people DO NOT LIKE to buy from the US because of the shipping problem...in particular what he has gone through in the past.

And before you NAY SAYINGS get involved, I put this forth because it was something positive from a customer who is INTERNATIONAL, and likes the way CANADA does business.....

Have a great day::-p

[dipmicro]

I agree, certain countries are extremely fast shipping from CP, I have quite a few buyers from UK and usually fast. We have had mail to UK, France or Autralia delivered in 2-3 days but I also had a UK customers who got his in 3 weeks with hefty customs charge. Seems that if it goes below the radar, is fast, otherwise it may get slow.

cottonwoodindustries, it may not apply to you, since you are probably using parcel services, but I am finding Light Packets are almost always fast, Small Packets may get quite slow.

Let's not forget that the delivery is always carried by local postal service. My speculation would be that USPS floods French Post with volume of parcels, creating backlogs and slow-downs, while if Canada stream may be much lower and faster to process.

[surplusdealdude]

I have no problems shipping from the States, but I do have a relevant story.

I was at the USPS one day when another ebayer came in who had to ship something to Russia.

He shipped it Express (read, $$$$) because he said that the item never arrives if he ships it a cheaper way.

A few weeks later, I got an order from Russia and shipped it through Canada Post ( the costs were comparable, and I suspected that, because the item was shipped from the US, either the US spooks or the Russian spooks were intercepting it).

It arrived no problems.

Nice customer - even gave me an idea for a new line of products.

If the costs are comparable, I'll use Canada Post to ship to Europe and Asia. Australia seems to work better with USPS, likely because the USPS is already delivering in the area (Saipan, Phillipines, etc).

And if Canada Post would ever wake up and realize that they could get easy business by slapping a small transfer charge on parcels going out of country and then shipping them en masse to the USPS, I'd use it in a second.

But I'm not holding my breath on that. -------------------------------------------------------------------

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
- Bertrand Russell