Postal strike "Item not received" fallout!
Summary: visual-sound shared their experience of operating their store during a recent postal strike, maintaining communication with buyers, and dealing with "item not received" claims after the strike ended. They received 11 such claims out of 27 mailed items, despite their efforts to communicate effectively. Other participants, including flipistics and lotzofuniquegoodies, noted delays in lettermail but varying degrees of success with package deliveries or changes to shipping methods during the strike. busybeas_books and phc64 reported similar issues, with claims of non-receipt also surfacing in other sellers' feedback, highlighting inconsistencies in delivery times post-strike. regs43 and imbuzzy mentioned adopting strategies like extended handling time and good communication to mitigate problems. ilikehockeyjerseys provided statistics from a news source showing variability in delivery times across regions.
So during the recent postal strike, I kept my store open and communicated with buyers by sending messages regarding the strike status and thanking them for being patient. Once the strike ended I also sent out thank-you messages to all my buyers and notified them when I had shipped their item. I felt I did very well considering I only had one US buyer cancel their order out of 28 sales made during the strike.
BOY WAS I WRONG!
Of the 27 items I mailed out, I have now received 11 item not received claims. What a kick in the teeth! I sell cd's and movies with free shipping on all Canadian sales. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?
ilikehockeyjerseys
·1 year agohttps://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/consumer-alert/article/canada-post-is-in-terminal-decline-there-is-no-way-around-it-delays-still-being-experienced-by-postal-service/
The relevant part:
On the morning of Jan. 9, we mailed the letters through Canada Post and asked each station to tell us as soon as their letters arrived.
CTV Halifax was the first to receive their letter in seven days, along with CTV Ottawa which also had theirs arrive in one week.
CTV Edmonton received their letter in nine days time and even though the letter addressed to me in Toronto was mailed within the Greater Toronto Area, it took 12 days for it to arrive to the Toronto newsroom.
CTV Vancouver didn’t receive their letter until 19 days later and CTV Montreal told us they are still waiting for their letter as it never arrived before the time of publishing.
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Granted, that is a small sample size and the right way to do it might have been to send multiple letters to each station over a period of a week. But hopefully that will give people some clarity about lettermail times. Stuff can arrive in a day or two, or it can take 2-4 weeks. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason. You can send something Ottawa to Toronto on Monday that takes a few weeks, and you can send the same package Ottawa to Toronto the next day, and it will take a few days. Luck of the draw?
My advice going forward would be to ensure you have the longest possible shipping window (Economy Shipping, not lettermail), and to message each buyer with a stock message when you send the item. I think that people are more patient if you reach out to them, you can also use it to manage expectations.
While the situation OP mentioned of 11 out of 27 is very excessive, I think people also need to adjust their expectations for how many INRs they can expect. In normal times, I get maybe 1 in a few hundred lettermail orders. I don't think that is a realistic expectation going forward.
flipistics
·1 year agoBy the time lettermail is running smoothly again, it should be just about time for the strike to restart 😰
phc64
·1 year agoI did not reopen my eBay store until January 2, and in the last two days I have heard from three buyers that they have not received their purchases (all shipped via Lettermail between January 6 and 10). That's about as many as I usually have to deal with over the course of an entire year.
imbuzzy
·1 year agoI'm glad that I kept my store open and continued running around 250 auctions per week.
Had over 130 lettermail packages ready to deliver by the time the strike was over. Only had 1 INR claim.
Good communication was the key and keeping notes about what each buyer was told really helped. I even warned new bidders about the situation and gave them the opportunity to back out. Only had two cancellations, IIRC.
A lot of my customers are repeat postcard colllectors who don't seem to mind waiting a bit longer for their vintage finds, so what you sell and to whom also matters.
Mail always seems to move quickly from here in Hamilton so that's a huge bonus too.
I don't seem to be experiencing any of the lettermail delays as mentioned earlier.
regs43
·1 year agoI switched to tracked shipping during the strike, but when the strike ended and I switched back to lettermail I kept my extended 10-15 day handling time until middle January (I also use the economy service that affords extra time to begin with). No INR's to date, and lettermail seems to be moving decently in most cases now.
busybeas_books
·1 year agoI've gotten 5 INRs from lettermail items sent last week of December through 1st week of January. I refunded them on the day that eBay said I had to resolve things by. No response from anyone after doing this so no clue if the gopds got there or not.
visual-sound
OP1 year agoHow many items in total did you ship?
busybeas_books
·1 year agolettermail- about 70
ilikehockeyjerseys
·1 year agoI stopped lettermail during the strike and resumed when Canada Post returned.
One INR so far, opened yesterday from an item sent January 6th. I am not overly concerned, but I do expect more INRs than usual. Most years, I only get maybe 1 every few hundred lettermail orders. The positive would be that I have received confirmation that a lot of lettermail orders have arrived via feedback.
The reason that I didn't send during the strike is because lettermail margins are slim enough that any additional time used on customer service or refunding orders wasn't worth it to me. With rising lettermail costs, and the time it takes to list and pack lettermail orders I am already on the fence about them. So adding another few hours a week sending and responding to messages, and then the risk of INRs, it didn't make sense to me.
Granted, I sell other things that go by parcel, and I sell on other platforms that don't use Canada Post - So while losing out on lettermail orders wasn't great, it was an easier choice for me to make than if I was strictly a lettermail business who would have zero revenue coming in by doing that.
If you did everything the right way, like extending your handling time to account for the strike, messaging buyers, etc - then that is a pretty big kick in the teeth to have that many INRs.
sin-n-dex
·1 year agoI had four items sell right before the strike (before I stopped Canada sales since I ship untracked small items with Canada Post). Two buyers left feedback, one was for the item that sold the night before the strike and sat in my office's mailroom at work for the whole strike duration before Canada Post started picking up mail again. That one package was half of my orders in value (fortunately a small dollar amount in total), so I haven't actually had to refund on any Canadian orders.
I'm hoping that with the strike being over for 6 weeks now and no complaints about non-receipt means everyone has their stuff and is happy.
Sorry for what you're dealing with, getting 11 is a lot. Hopefully you don't end up in "ebay jail" paying higher FVF as a result, I know if your rate is considered high and there's more than 10 buyers they can assess extra fees.
C.
flipistics
·1 year agoPackages are running fine, but lettermail is still significantly delayed and it doesn't look like that's changing anytime soon. My media store is still shut down for exactly this reason. I may reactivate it soon and switch to expedited lite rather than lettermail. It's not ideal, but at least I may be able to make a few sales rather than none.
lotzofuniquegoodies
·1 year agoIn speaking to a letter carrier in Calgary recently he said parcels were "mostly" caught up. Letters were still behind. This may be all entirely random depending on depot or region. Personally, my inbound letter mail is consistently inconsistent. (Delivered to community mail boxes.)
lotzofuniquegoodies
·1 year agoRe: Letter mail delays. News story Feb 5, 2025 - Testing letter mail delivery times
https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/video/2025/02/05/canada-post-still-struggling-to-catch-up-with-mail-service-after-strike/
recped
·1 year agoI was seeing slow deliveries on lettermail sent in the first two weeks, the ones I mailed in mid January were still slow but not as bad. The Lettermail I sent out last week were back to normal, order sent last Thursday from Toronto delivered on Monday in Surrey BC.