Can't compete with USA shippers on identical Products

[productaxi]

What's your opinion on the USA shippers into Canada?  It's my opinion that the seller's who aren't using the Global Shipping Program are able to send their matching products here cheaper than we can send to our fellow Canadians.  To turn the table, I can ship via Small Packet Air to USA on some items than I can my fellow Canadians.

[brandeentertainment]

My personal opinion is with the next year or 2 Canada post is gonna roll out a new shipping method with tracking for cheaper but I could be VERY wrong...

There is nothing much we can do other then find a way to work with what we have...

I know I am revising my stores from top to bottom and by make everything pretty and nice I am getting buyers to pay more ...

[pjcdn2005]

I hope that you are right brandee but I would be very surprised if they did that.

[femmefan1946]

Deepak Chopra has said that he sees the future of Canada Post as being in parcel delivery and not in lettermail.

However, before we think that means adjusting rates to encourage Canadian mail order sellers, we should remember that he was hired from PitneyBowes and I imagine he looks at competing with couriers rather than with other postal services.

I complain a lot that it costs $12 to mail a 2.5 cm thick paperback to Fort Mcmurray. I tried to find out how much UPS would charge for the same service, but the pricing is opaque.

[mr.elmwood]

Femme, I have found that couriers are more or less the same price in Canada. Worse, they only deliver where they feel like delivering or hand-off to CP. Couriers will never be a force in Canada, They face the same challenges that CP does.

Couriers like to cherry pick the best routes and leave CP stuck with the rest of the country. I say, force couriers to deliver everywhere that CP is forced to deliver, or get out of the country, and then see what their rates are.

Listen to how fast the phrase "not economically viable" comes out from the couriers.

[toff3]

force couriers to deliver everywhere that CP is forced to deliver

Mr E,

Eh?? Better sign up for Economics 101 at your nearest Continuing Education establishment.

That sort of hamstring - known, in this context, as the universal service obligation - has resulted in the financial wreck that is today's Canada Post.

Tom

[mr.elmwood]

Well, Tom, Social Responsibility and Globalization 101. How do communities off the Trans Canada get mail, then?

[bb_cool_stuff]

I think we should invest in a horse & buggy Inuk, sounds like a great business opportunity.

A little liquid antifreeze during the cold months, some rum for Pierre if he decides to partake, a Canada Goose parka & we're ready to go.

Pick you up tomorrow & please pick up a bag of carrots for our four legged investment..

[mr.elmwood]

Sled dogs.

The ugly side of sled dogs is that Polar bears snack on them.

I was just looking at CP's annual reports and saw that CP has $1 BILLION in cash in the bank. Over the last five years $295 million in net profits.

By-the-by there BB, sometime this year I hope to be moving to Dauphin. Ontario is not for us.

[bb_cool_stuff]

Nothing wrong with Dauphin, the whole Parkland Region is beautiful.

You head must be going " ka-ching " as you will have unlimited access to pre-loved car parts.

Sounds like a Great Opportunity, remember to update your Ukrainian passport.

[mr.elmwood]

The Mrs is already pre-enjoying perogies.

I am not going to miss the Ontario nanny state where the government is involved in every little aspect of life.

Oddly, I was looking for a hood ornament for a friend in Tennessee. I ran an ad in Belleville kijiji and got a response from Brandon.

[cumos55]

The Dauphin Ukrainian Festival

http://www.cnuf.ca/

If you are not Ukrainian by ancestry... You become an honorary Ukrainian for the period of the festival

[mr.elmwood]

57 years in Winnipeg, I know enough about Dauphin. I will run into people I know.

[femmefan1946]

If you are ever in Castlegar BC, say for the spring skiing, drop into the Doukobour Cultural Centre for their perogies.

Or Weezie's Borscht Hut for a meal that would make Takeru Kobayashi blanche.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeru_Kobayashi

If wishes was horses, we'd all be eatin steak. -- Jayne Cobb

[mr.elmwood]

Out west ya have to know "Hunky Bills Perogie Maker". I can still remember the TV ads.

[toff3]

Mr E,

The folks in Rankin Inlet aren't in danger of losing their mail service. It's just that, eventually, it's going to cost them more (as it logically should).

As to Canada Post's financial health, it's not as simple as you paint it. You've looked at the 2013 annual report, totted up the profit and loss figures for the past 5 years (2009-2013)  and come up with a net profit for the period of $295 million.

1. Those figures are for the Canada Post Group of Companies, which includes Purolator. Purolator is a money-maker and contributes significantly to the Group's bottom line.

2. The CP Group has been bleeding red ink for the last 3 years and anticipates continuing to do so in 2014.

3. For 2009 and 2010 there were major one-time gains, which give a misleading picture of the financial health of a business (CP even admitted as much in their annual report for 2009). In 2009 and 2010 there were major reductions in employee benefits expenses. 2010 also saw a reduction of future income tax payments (because business was starting to tank!). Had it not been for credits such as these, the core Canada Post segment of the CP Group in 2010 would have been in the red.

4. Losses in 2012 and 2013 were reduced by one-time gains from reductions in employee benefits expenses and the sale of real estate, respectively.

Finally, when your pension solvency deficit exceeds $6.3 billion, a $1 billion nest egg doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

Tom

[mr.elmwood]

Well, you are cherry picking at the math. The $7 billion gross receipts creates $50 billion worth of economic activity which created tax revenues far in excess of teh "bleeding". You advocate removing $50 billion from the economy because they lost $30 million in2013? Strange math indeed.

You are also ignoring the reduction in losses. You are also ignoring the removal of old and costly infrastructure with new and modern facilities. The old serviced the past, the new services the future.

As you well know, CP divested itself of its' expensive downtown buildings in Vancouver and Winnipeg, building highly efficient through-put buildings at the airport. They alse are divesting themselves of expensive walking personnel and investing in parcel trucks.

The divesture in Winnipeg and Vancouver were touted as tests to see how well it would go. They were phenomenally sound, forward thinking business decisions.

There is no pension solvency issue. Does not exist. Unfunded pensions are paid through future earnings. The money coming in always exceeds the money going out, in perpetuity.

A snapshot of today has nothing to do with the rolling five year plan.

[tobyshitzu]

CP would already be in bankruptcy if they hadn't been granted relief from making their required pension fund contributions.  You didn't read their annual report if you think they don't have a pension solvency issue, they spell it out pretty clearly.  Its true their operational losses were mitigated by one time gains, the same way sears reports "profit" as they sell off stores to offset money losing operations

[realjazz-123]

All these opinions on CP finances may well go on forever until the company is sold. For me the discussion is interesting but irrelevant. Last year shipping CP  international tracked insured airmail  was $23 and now it is $78. This is real!! For me this single CP fact , not opinion, is very difficult to accept with an"oh well " frame of mind. It has not made selling any easier, and with difficulty I  am trying to adjust.

[pjcdn2005]

Last year shipping CP  international tracked insured airmail  was $23 and now it is $78.

Services are more expensive each year but I'm not aware of any of them going up by that much.  Which international service with tracking used to be $23 and to where?