FedEx closing all retail office stores in Canada

[dutchman48]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/fedex-closing-stores-1.4215822

[snoopwiz]

"We reached the decision to exit the Canadian market after thoughtful evaluations of our business operations and considerations about our future"

Translated from "corporate speak" often means  "We were hemorrhaging money, hand over fist"

[femmefan1946]

Meanwhile , with a well paid, unionized workforce, lower prices, and delivery everywhere in Canada:

https://www.canadapost.ca/web/en/blogs/announcements/details.page?article=2016/05/27/canada_post_seg...

[dutchman48]

And I believe the union negotiates again in January, so more fun ahead. That however is a different subject

[tobyshitzu]

This is just closing their office supply stores that would compete with staples, nothing to do with delivery service that competes with canada post

[dutchman48]

No sure what this means now:

"I needed to ship a parcel to New York yesterday and I was told by the woman at the counter that all the office stores in Canada were closing," London customer Jeff Blake explained. 

[pjcdn2005]

The customer may not have realized what they meant by 'office' stores or perhaps they just aren't aware of other places in that area where they can ship using Fedex. It looks like there are at least 3 places in London where they can use Fedex and only one of those is an Fedex office store.

[tobyshitzu]

These were the stores they bought from Kinkos and rebranded fedex, after ups bought mailboxes etc.   Nothing to do with the delivery service at all other then it happened to be fedex that owned them . 

[dutchman48]

It doesn't affect us as we don't have any of them here and only 4 fedex drop off and pick up locations in all of Alberta and I have never used them.

Just for curiosity, could people not take parcels to ship or pick up parcels from the locations that are being closed?

Biggest concern is people losing their jobs.

[pjcdn2005]

There are more than 4 places to drop off and pick up Fedex packages in Alberta. The majority are in other businesses such as Pack and Post, Home Hardware etc.  There are also quite a few drop boxes.

http://www.fedex.com/locate/index.html?locale=en_CA&s_kwcid=AL!5207!3!74030041383!p!!!!fedex%20shipp...

[tobyshitzu]

yes they served as fedex outlets, but there are lots of spots from fedex own locations, other businesses that do the same thing as the fedex stores, plus piles of location to drop items with self printed labels.  There cant be many people left who want to go to a retail location to buy courier postage.

[hlmacdon]

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@toby**bleep**zu wrote:

yes they served as fedex outlets, but there are lots of spots from fedex own locations, other businesses that do the same thing as the fedex stores, plus piles of location to drop items with self printed labels.  There cant be many people left who want to go to a retail location to buy courier postage.

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I guess they rely on casual shippers and surrounding small businesses. Never really understood the attraction of the model given the price of commercial real estate in urban areas and the lack of anything really unique in the offering.

[ypdc_dennis]

... putting 214 employees in three provinces out of work ...

Really nothing to do with the FedEx delivery side of things. In my city there are a number of non-FedEx drop off points. But pickup (if I missed a delivery) is from the FedEx distribution centre.

-..-

[Anonymous]

FedFex could at least reduce their hefty postage rates by 75% to compete with Canada Post!!  Duh to FedFeX!!

[hlmacdon]

FedEx competes with Purolator, not Canada Post. As someone who has worked with retailers that ship thousands of packages a day and reviewed damage claims at year end I can tell you that you get what you pay for.