eBay

rose-dee · ‎07-24-2015

I think I may have been rejoicing too soon that the recent overhaul of CP's website hadn't affected Paypal shipping labels.

Today I had to ship a fairly valuable item (ca. $250 Cdn) to the U.S. I wanted to send it Expedited, for the tracking and also for the insurance and delivery confirmation. The box I had was 28 x 11 x 11 cm, and fit the item perfectly.

I entered all the usual details on the Paypal label page, but when I hit "continue", got an error message saying that invalid dimensions had been entered. I couldn't proceed. I tried entering the dimensions in inches rather than cms, tried adding a centimeter to each dimension, still no go. I tried backing out completely and starting over -- still got stuck at that error message. I tried Tracked Packet, same result.

The info pop-up for Expedited showed minimum acceptable dimensions as 100mm x 70mm x 10mm (and if I haven't gone completely demented, I believe that means 10cm x 7cm x 1cm). So my box should have been OK.

Fortunately I hadn't sealed up the item in the box, and I happened to have an "official" Canada Post "size Small" mailing box on hand. I tried the dimensions of that box (28.6 x 22.9 x 6.4cm) and -- voilà! -- I managed to get through to the final screen.

However, I now noticed that my requested additional insurance wasn't showing up. I went back, edited again, entered the insurance amount, and again it didn't register when I got to the final screen. By this point, after nearly 45 minutes of mucking about, I simply purchased the label and sent the item in the larger box. Chances are I overpaid somewhat for the bigger dimensions. I gave up on CP and bought my insurance through a 3rd party.

When I dropped the parcel off at my local P.O. I also took along my empty smaller box and asked the clerk to verify whether it was acceptable for Expedited USA -- she said it definitely was. Does this mean the CP/Paypal labelling system is now only recognizing dimensions that match CP's own products? Yikes!

As an aside, our CP clerk, who is uncommonly helpful and usually well versed in CP details, told me that they (meaning the CP counter employees at that P.O.) hadn't been told about the major overhaul of the CP site. Her words: "They never tell us about these things, we find out from our customers". Oh boy.

In any case, I'm not sure who to report the Expedited dimension glitch to -- perhaps Raphael next Wednesday (if they're around)? If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know, although I really don't have a lot of time to spare on following up something like this at the moment. I use Expedited USA enough that this could really cause a problem.

toff3 · ‎07-28-2015

Have just come across this thread and am extremely flattered that some of you seem persuaded that I am the resident authority on all matters pertaining to Canada Post. However, I hasten to assure Pierre that even I cannot "explain the logic used by Canada Post" - for the simple reason that Canada Post does not indulge in logic, unless you count as logic CP's penchant for squeezing as much revenue out of their customers as possible...which brings me to Sylviebee's query on the 50% rate jump from a Small Packet USA weighing 499 g to one weighing 501g (actually the jump is from 500 g to 501g). And, as RNS rightly pointed out, you can ship a Small Packet weighing as much as 1000 g to USA for the same price as the 501 g packet. Fair? Of course not. But when it comes to CP, fair is not in the equation. Any rational, logical pricing scheme would have an intermediate step, say 750 g, with an appropriate intermediate rate. For years, CP charged the same rate for Small Packets International weighing 1001 g and 2000 g. Ludicrous. Then, a few years back, CP (reluctantly, I'm sure) introduced an intermediate rate for a 1500 g packet.

I'm glad Rose-dee's problem was resolved. It pays to have the relevant pages from the Canada Postal Guide or the Business Prices document handy when you're navigating the murky waters of Canada Post.

Tom