eBay Workshop with Canada Post: Thursday, August 25, 1:00-2:00 PM ET

[carly@ebay.com]

Please join us on Thursday, August 25, from 1-2 PM ET for a workshop with Canada Post. Kim from Canada Post will be here to answer all of your questions about Canada Post letterpost service and what the regulations are for using this type of service.

If you are not able to attend, you can leave your questions here in advance of the workshop and they will be answered during the workshop, and you can come back in and check the answers.

Hope you can join us!

Carly

[secondtimesthecharm]

Can you clarify exactly what is considered 'lettermail'? I ask as I understood it to be paper only - no magazines/books/DVD's etc.

Won an item on eBay. Shipping was $7.00US and because I understood only paper product could be mailed as lettermail, I was OK with that - it was a small T-Shirt. The seller shipped in a bubble envelope from Markham, ON and paid $1.70 at the post office.

[tobyshitzu]

Perhaps the reason we still have people here confused on letterPOST vs letterMAIL is the answers one gets from Canada Post itself.

Can Kim comment on this (typical) reply from Canada Post - are policies now "probably" in place? Does Canada Post consider it acceptable that this is the only type of reply we can get from them, and the answers are often 10X worse when we ask outlet staff?

In regards to domestic lettermail, you probably would be able to send a small CD and the clerk at the Post Office probably wouldn’t make a big deal of it. I have heard that they are still letting customers send smaller items in a regular sized envelope, only because it is domestic! When it comes to international lettermail, the policy is being reinforced, to avoid people trying to make claims on items that they have sent. As you can see it has only been tin the past couple of moths that the policy has really been reinforced, as per the Canadian Postal Guide;

Note 2005/04/13: Goods are not permitted for movement as Letter-post. Items such as CD's and other small goods must be shipped using other International/USA Distribution Services.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

Matt Gibbs

Customer Service


How are your customers supposed to know the rules when none of your staff do? Quite frequently they answer questions by cutting+paste with link from the wrong section of the psotal guide (Eg incentive letterpost page on question on letterpsot)

[tobyshitzu]

I think the answer to this question - why the change in letterpost now - was non known last time. Can Kim confirm this is the official explanation from Canada Post?

This policy has forever been with Canada Post, but was never reinforced and the corporation was very lenient in regards to the matter. Just recently has it been discovered that there is a problem with allowing this to happen. Customers have been sending CD’s and other smaller item that fit within the standards of regular mail. Then when the item would go missing, customers would try to claim the value of the item. To avoid this, Canada Post is now enforcing the rule so that items that go abroad are going to be insured in case of loss or damage.

I understand that a lot of customers and small businesses disagree with this, but it is not a new policy that has been introduced.

As per the Canadian Postal Guide:

Note 2005/04/13: Goods are not permitted for movement as Letter-post. Items such as CD's and other small goods must be shipped using other International/USA Distribution Services.

If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Regards,

Matt Gibbs

Customer Service

[thomasj7342]

I know we aren't suppose to mail goods by letter post but:items with the general characteristics of paper(in the postal guide)=goods=books,magazines.Can Kim clarify me that please:Are we allowed to send books or magazines by international letter-post as they have the general characteristics of paper?

Thank you

[recped]

There were plenty of unanswered questions in the thread for the previous workshop......

What happened to them? Guess they were too hot to handle!

Ben
"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915

[patinage4ever]

Today I received the following information in a real paper snail mailed letter over the signature of Moya Greene, Pres & CEO of Canada Post. I am not so naive as to think she actually wrote me but presumably this was done by a fairly high level employee. The Canada Post logo is embossed in silver print & the stationery also has a couple of narrow gold bands.

""""""The Regulations to the Canada Post Corporation Act specify that a letter-post item cannot contain any "goods" like a small gift, book, CD or similar item. It appears that some retail outlets misinterpreted the Regulations & were accepting letter-post items in error. All outlets have now been reminded of the correct application of the Regulations.

It was to clarify this point that we recently updated out web site to indicate that US & International letter-post has content regulations that we must observe, while domestic lettermail is based on the size of the item. The content regulations apply to your pins, & the Small Packet rate must be used for mailing them outside Canada. Within Canada, however, they may be sent as lettermail."""""""

[misterbeaver]

RE: Today I received the following information in a real paper snail mailed letter over the signature of Moya Greene, Pres & CEO of Canada Post. I am not so naive as to think she actually wrote me but presumably this was done by a fairly high level employee. The Canada Post logo is embossed in silver print & the stationery also has a couple of narrow gold bands.

Kim, is the reason rates are so high for Canada Post because the "corporation" spends so much of it's profits on fancy embossed gold paper? Honestly, those cents could be used elsewhere.

[misterbeaver]

Has Canada Post considered reintroducing prepaid boxes, preferably for Expedited and XpressPost to the USA, or even domestically for that matter. You said in the last session that CP is considering reintroducing them, but are they still considering or has there been any progress

[misterbeaver]

Can CP pay you overtime so you can stay an extra hour each session to go through more of the many unanswered questions from previous sessions. Most of the important ones are usually skipped, and people keep asking the same questions which gets annoying.

[misterbeaver]

has any progress been made on ebay and canada post integration. (labels, postage direct from ebay, etc like usps)

[misterbeaver]

I got a question about the Click in a Ship service you mentioned last time. I tried it once but i havent gone back because i need to clear something first. Can we use our Venture 1 account number for discounts on applicable services (parcels). And also does it take off 3% like EST since this is an electronic solution and thus no need/very little need for a post office (only need to drop off if its to big for mailbox). So does it not include it, or does it include the 8% automatically, or whats going on?

Also I didnt see an Expedited option for domestic service. Whats up with that

[lilybean@ebay.com]

Thank you for all of your questions. I will be sure to forward to Kim at Canada Post so we address all of them in the August 25 workshop.

Regards,

lilybean

[sarlye]

I am confuse already. I am a relative 'young' seller and I just mailed two different size items thru Canada Post. The larger one (8" x 6" x 2") DVD box set to the US, which cost me $7.50 plus tax (Small Pkt Air US); the smaller item (7" x 2.5" x 1") - a watch box to Ontario and it cost $9.60 plus tax by XPost. The slower service was 1 dollar less.

Why is the US pkg cheaper as it is heavier and bigger size? Then the Cdn pkg should be adjusted lower accordingly.

I was also charge a fuel surcharge of 50 cents and then GST taxes on it?? what is that about?

[misterbeaver]

In reply to the last post. We dont really need CP to answer this as its an easy set of questions.

Small Packet costs less because of a few factors. For one, CP only delivers halfway in most cases (not all the time), so there is less geographic distance sometimes to pass it to the USPS system, then travel cross country to deliver domestically. Also Small packet is weight based, whereas all domestic parcel services are weight and size based so charges are much more variable. Also XpressPost is the best domestic service next to courier, and the faster delivery option you choose the higher it would come to. If you have Venture 1 account, atleast in my experience most packages average about 8 bucks, and when u use Expedited Service, it is slightly faster then Regular and slightly slower then Xpress, so you get the best fo both worlds; speed and affordability, and plus you get free insurance up to 100 bucks and delivery confirmation so you usually save atleats a buck to a buck fify per transaction from using Expedited/Venture 1. And lasty, Small Packets are very slow. Although I experience fast delivery for both ground and air small packet, sometimes it can take from 4-6 weeks for ground and 2-4 weeks for air if customs is in a bad mood. Thats just a few of many reasons why small packet is cheaper.

Although a good question to further upon your original to Kim is whether CP has decided to make plans for a small packet service domestically like the USPS offers.

The fuel charge is simply to cover costs as Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world, so there is alot of land to cover. The fuel charge is to account for those trips to small towns or remote areas where a truck is sent to deliver a small amount of packages, and thus is not efficient and since gas is expensive, the costs are passed onto us the customers via a fuel charge.

[tryingtotidy]

I have a few questions...
Why is Canada Post so much more expensive compaired to USPS when the services are fewer?
Will Canada Post come out with a service for those of us that send small goods (I for one sell lapel pins sometimes) that easily fit in a small envelope, are under 2cm in height, and are under 100 grams nationally and internationally?
The cheapest option with Canada Post costs way more then what the sales items cost usually.

[patinage4ever]

Hi trying

I have it in writing from Moya Greene, Pres & CEO of Canada Post that there is no problem sending a lapel pin by 'other lettermail' - that means within Canada. Less than 2 cm & less than 100 g is only $1 plus GST.

The problem for pin collectors like me is the interpretation of Regulations resulting in having to use Small Packet services after Sept 19 to send pins to US or to any other destination outside of Canada. For years I've been trading pins with people outside of Canada using 'other letter-post' with never a problem.

[tobyshitzu]

Service issue with Canadapost:

Last week I used a public computer to print out some EST labels, which seemed to have some trouble getting error screens. Two of the labels turned up in history twice.

I called the help phone # shown, and directed to the billing #. I called the billing # to be directed to a voicemail...of someone who is away. I called abck the billing # to be directed to that persons boss who would supposedly get back to me right away. Another person has now called me back, directing me to an email address(I believe the person who is away).

Can their not be a more customer firendly system put in place to deal with minor issues? You'll end up wasting more then the $13 in question in staff time to deal with this.

A similar issue, I've just received my first refund for a missed delivery guarantee - over two months afetr making the claim and several contacts with canada post (including never returned vociemail message).

[dbcanadian]

I have a question in regards to the new lettermail regulations. Mr.Elmwood a poster here on CTS brought up a very good point. Will credit card providers be subject to the new regulations as well?

They credit cards are plastic not paper so does this mean they will also be subject to the small packet rates???

I would be very very interested if this application will extend to them as well.


(thanks Mr.Elmwood for bringing this interesting question to light)


.

[patinage4ever]

All my credit cards are issued by companies in Canada so lettermail is used.