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rose-dee · ‎11-21-2014

I don't often just rant, but here it is.

I purchased an Xpresspost label on the evening of Nov. 18th (for nearly $50 mind you), had my parcel on the P.O. counter and scanned -- I watched them do it and heard the beep - 10 minutes after they opened at 8:00 a.m. on Nov. 19th (a Wednesday), expecting that with such pricey "express" service, the parcel would reach my customer in Toronto by this Friday, i.e. within the stated 3 days.

Well, today I check the tracking, and CP has extended the delivery date to Monday (Nov. 24th) because "item was received after cut-off". What? 8:10 a.m. at the P.O. is after cut-off?

OK, I get that I'm in a semi-rural area, that adds 1 day. The Xpresspost delivery standard from my ship-out city (Halifax) is 2 days. Fine, 3 days total. I put my parcel, prepaid and ready to go, on the P.O. counter at 8:10 a.m. on Day 1, expecting it to get to Toronto in time. Now it's suddenly 4 business days for a $50 shipping cost. I see that the delivery standard for Expedited is 4 days! I might as well have saved myself $30.

The parcel will now actually arrive 3 days later than the originally expected delivery date of Nov. 21st.

Can anybody explain this to me? I'm pretty hopping mad about having thrown my money away for nothing. I will complain to CP once I know the parcel has been receive at the other end, but I know I won't get my money back because they revised the on-time guarantee.

e_knny · ‎11-21-2014

i think you can call canada post and get your money back

mr.elmwood · ‎11-21-2014

I was told by very senior employees that the drop off day does not count. The next day is one.

I dropped off a parcel for Austria, I forget, Dec 30 last year. I specifically asked which days counted. I bet the Post Office $162 that it would not get there in the stated business days. I won $162 that I split with the customer.

The two employees were in the only PO in Belleville. Very intelligent and very personable. Combined experience was about 70 years between them. Drop off day is zero, the next day is one. I am guessing that would be the difference between one day service and next day service.

You can try your line of reasoning, but, keep what I have said in mind as their reasoning.

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maggiebvintage2010 · ‎11-21-2014

mr.elmwood - Agreed - Day 1 is the next business day according to employees at my local PO

pjcdn2005 · ‎11-21-2014

Did the tracking originally say that it would arrive on Friday?

According to the info on the CP site Xpresspost national delivery standards are 3 business days. As others have said, the following day counts as the first business day so Monday would be the 3rd business day.

I have seen some expedited parcels delivered on a Saturday in Canada so it's possible that will happen in this case.

tobyshitzu · ‎11-21-2014

I got a parcel last sunday, contractor said hes working every sunday until Xmas. That is a lot earlier then they've started doing that past years

jt-libra · ‎11-21-2014

How did your buyer react to this delay, rose-dee? Hopefully she's been understanding .... you don't need low DSR's on top of everything.

The fact that the website indicates "CP has extended the delivery date to Monday (Nov. 24th)", extended being the operative word, you may be able to get your postage refunded. I hope so .... athough there's still the matter of your buyer's satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. Good luck!

rose-dee · ‎11-22-2014

Thanks to Mr. Elmwood and all others for your input. I was completely unaware that Day 1 was not counted. I'll know better next time not to bother with Xpresspost within Canada. For the extra $20-30, it really isn't worth it. One or two more days in most cases with Expedited is usually fine. Ironically I've found that Xpresspost outdoes Expedited very well to the U.S. (maybe it's actually the USPS that deserves the kudos for that).

My buyer will be understanding (a long time repeat customer), but it did make me rather upset because the upgrade to Xpresspost came out of my pocket. Oh well, live and learn.

mr.elmwood · ‎11-22-2014

@jt-libra wrote:
How did your buyer react to this delay, rose-dee? Hopefully she's been understanding .... you don't need low DSR's on top of everything.

The fact that the website indicates "CP has extended the delivery date to Monday (Nov. 24th)", extended being the operative word, you may be able to get your postage refunded. I hope so .... athough there's still the matter of your buyer's satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. Good luck!

Well, JT, the way I am reading this s, Rose bought the label one day, and dropped the parcel off the next. That pushes everything back a day.

Yes, I know there was no way in Hell she could have dropped it off the day she printed the label. That is an anomaly in the label printing process. Printing a label is not the same as introducing the parcel into the postal system.

Think of the scamming possibilities! Print a guaranteed delivery date label, hold the parcel for two days, then file to get your money back. I "think" the PO has that one figured out.

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jt-libra · ‎11-22-2014

Of course, what you've said makes sense, Mr. E.

I'm afraid I might have mistakenly thought, as rose-dee may have, that if an item makes the early morning pick-up, the parcel would be on its way that day, even though Canada Post's delivery guarantee policy would consider the following day as Day 1.

If I drop a tracked parcel off before the 9:00 a.m. pickup, it often arrives at its destination a day earlier than if I drop it off for the 5:00 pick-up.

pjcdn2005 · ‎11-22-2014

It probably depends on how often the post is picked up from that particular post office/outlet. The mail is picked up at the outlet I deal with at 4 p.m. each day so even if I drop off the package one evening after 4...the parcel will get there at the same time as if I dropped it up at 3:30 the next afternoon.

mr.elmwood · ‎11-22-2014

This is where a city like Winnipeg has an advantage. Three pickups per day, two on Sat. The truck goes straight to the brand new sorting plant at the airport. I could mail a parcel in the morning and it was out of the province that day.

Even from Dauphin, Capital of the Borscht Belt, truck goes down to Winnipeg every evening M-F. My parcels are on the plane overnight.

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rose-dee · ‎11-22-2014

I do understand what everyone has said about pick-up times, but here's the thing -- from CP's information, my parcel must have sat in the P.O. in Annapolis Royal all day on Day 1. That makes no sense to me, as I happen to know they have a truck picking up and going to Halifax at 9:00 a.m., and another around 3:00 p.m.

In other words, it got into the system at the local P.O. just after they opened on a business day (Wed.), and didn't end up in Halifax until the end of the next day. So, to Canada Post that first day doesn't count? Does that mean you drop off an Xpresspost parcel and expect it will go nowhere for 24 hours -- or in my case more like 36 hours? Is it perhaps possible that somebody in the local P.O. put the parcel in the wrong bin (regular parcel, for example) or otherwise messed up?

I'm beginning to wonder if these "extended delivery estimate" messages are just CP's way of avoiding claims against their on-time delivery guarantee.

If it helps to clarify what I'm saying, here are the details from the tracking info:

2014/11/20	06:09	HALIFAX	In transit
	03:50	HALIFAX	Item processed
2014/11/19	08:10	ANNAPOLIS ROYAL	Shipment received at originating postal facility

pjcdn2005 · ‎11-22-2014

You dropped it off at the p.o. at 8:10 a.m. and it was processed in Halifax at 3:50 a.m. the following morning...so about 20 hours later. It might not have been processed as soon as it arrived in Halifax.

I just remembered that a couple of years ago our postal outlet had more than one pickup during the Christmas rush. They told me that even if I had the parcel there before the first pick up of the day, it wouldn't leave this city until that night as parcels went from here to Calgary just once a day. Perhaps that is what happened in your situation.

rose-dee · ‎11-22-2014

@pjcdn2005 wrote:
You dropped it off at the p.o. at 8:10 a.m. and it was processed in Halifax at 3:50 a.m. the following morning...so about 20 hours later.

The way I had read the times on the tracking was: processed at 3:50 p.m. in Halifax and in transit at 6:30 p.m. It didn't occur to me those could be a.m. times! So, for some reason, assuming the parcel was picked up on the regular 9:00 a.m. run from Annapolis Royal on Day 1, it didn't actually get scanned in Halifax until early the next morning. That seems very slow handling for Xpresspost, but then what do I know?

maggiebvintage2010 · ‎11-22-2014

I'm going to guess that the cut off time for the 9:00 am truck to Halifax is actually 5:00 pm the day before. So your 08:10 parcel probably got on the 3:00pm truck to Halifax. Then it got sorted and put into the next part of the process by the overnight shift.

theundercutter · ‎11-22-2014

In my experience, an XPRESSPOST parcel that is picked up from me by Canada Post is processed and delivered the next day (within the province). Putting the parcel in a mailbox will delay the delivery by 1 day. I also find XPRESSPOST to be a valuable service. It usually costs less than $5 more than Expedited so I can bill my customer $5 shipping upgrade.

Edmonton, Alberta to Charlottetown, PEI in 2 days and it's only $4 more than expedited which takes 8 days.

rose-dee · ‎11-23-2014

@maggiebvintage2010 wrote:
I'm going to guess that the cut off time for the 9:00 am truck to Halifax is actually 5:00 pm the day before. So your 08:10 parcel probably got on the 3:00pm truck to Halifax. Then it got sorted and put into the next part of the process by the overnight shift.

That could very well be the explanation, in usual CP logic.

I will likely never use Xpresspost post again within Canada (this was actually the first time I didn't opt for my usual Expedited service). I just can't see the point in spending an extra $20 or more for a possible hope of saving 1 or 2 days in delivery time.

I've always found Expedited to be reliable and pretty much delivered within the time frames I expected, so I see no real purpose in upgrading to Xpresspost, especially for the size and weight I was sending (it was quite a large box, over 1.5kg total weight).

If I have another such parcel and someone who has to have it within 3 days in Canada, I'll use FedEx or Purolator.

rose-dee · ‎11-23-2014

@theundercutter wrote:
In my experience, an XPRESSPOST parcel that is picked up from me by Canada Post is processed and delivered the next day (within the province). Putting the parcel in a mailbox will delay the delivery by 1 day. I also find XPRESSPOST to be a valuable service. It usually costs less than $5 more than Expedited so I can bill my customer $5 shipping upgrade.

Edmonton, Alberta to Charlottetown, PEI in 2 days and it's only $4 more than expedited which takes 8 days.

Yes, but what size of parcel was that? The items I sell that are of a value high enough to warrant Xpresspost shipping tend to be fairly heavy (well over 1kg) and need to go in the Extra-large Canada Post box (around the size of a banker's box). The difference in those cases is usually well over $20.

I would also have expected that placing a parcel on the Post Office counter just minutes after they opened would mean it would get into the early stream that day, but apparently not. I would never put that kind of parcel (with an item valued over $300) in a mailbox. I've never used the CP pick-up service because I'm in a semi-rural area where it's not available.

mr.elmwood · ‎11-23-2014

Isn't learning new stuff fun.

I go looking for people who know more than me. Then, I pick their brains. I want the people who will say "This, will or won't work, and this is why". Then, I follow their advice.

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