Canada Post ANTI CANADIAN

[papercowboy]

If you have been selling on ebay for any lengh of time you will soon realize that Canada Post is NOT a "Crown Corporation" as it's supposed to be!I would be the last to complain about anyone making a profit,but CP is really getting GREEDY on all fronts..Go and look at their profits for the last few years...Massive...All would be fine but we cannot properly compete.I would say 20-50% of our customers question the shipping costs...REally tiresome answering and explaining we have no media mail etc...You can find a Canadian Gov website with all our MLA's and their emails.I suggest sending an email to your member explaining that ecommerce is suffering in Canada because of Canada Post....Just a thought!

[shoplineca]

papercowboy
Are you saying that CP is NOT Canadian because it is making huge profits and that is not the Canadian way to do business?

I would be more concerned with their waste of money through poor management and extremely high wages being paid that if corrected, the savings could be used to reduce the fees charged rather than having CP not make a profit.

While they are a Crown Corporation, they are not like the NRC or other ones which depend 100% on government funding. I wish that the CBC took some lessons from CP and depended less (or not at all) on government monies.

I honestly dont feel that the rates they charge are ripping us off. I do feel that the gas surcharge is a rip off, however most carriers charge it so it has become a global excuse for ripping off consumers.

Often this board compares the cost of mailing to the US however we CP's principle responsibility is the movement of mail within Canada. We have a larger country to provide service to with a population 1/10th that of the US so CP's costs are naturally much higher than USPS in that the cost of having an infrastructure to get mail to every Canadian within a specified and generally acceptable time period is far higher than the cost for USPS to get mail to all Americans living in the US.

We dont have media mail because there is no need for CP to have it. Plain and simple, there is no competition forcing them to offer that service. They are a business and it wouldnt make any business sense to offer it and eat into their profits.

At the same time your US competitors cant use media mail to ship their products into Canada so the problems is not shipping with CP within Canada, it is CP shipping into the US and that is a relatively small part of CP's business in media mail as the greatest cross border flow of media is from the US into Canada.

In addition, they have to pay USPS so for CP there is the cost of handling that media within Canada from where you mailed it to the border, turning it over to USPS through Customs and USPS' cost for delivery.

I assume that the 20-50% of your compaintants are from the US. Your answer that we dont have media mail is only part of the response you should be giving them, basically it is the added cost of paying to deliver the media through 2 carriers, CP and USPS, they both get their cut of the cost of delivery.

I dont believe that the cost for Americans having to deliver their media to Canada is that much different than your cost to ship to US customers as I have seen many threads discussing that very issue on the US Power Seller board.

Sorry if I sound like a flag waver for CP, I am not but I dont see the solution in CP subsidizing media shipments into the US.

The best way seems to be getting your items into the US for mailing in a way less expensive than CP delivering and charging for each individual package, something that many Cdn PSers are doing now in making weekly trips across the border.

Malcolm

[montrealmaps]

Hello Papercowboy,

I agree with you and understand exactly what do you mean.
More than 70% of my canadian customers ask me, why I charge 9 CAD for a small packet (a cardboard tube with an old map I sell weights only 0.15 kg!!) sent from BC to Ontario, and only 7 CAD for the same packet sent to Japan? Three customers refused last year to close the transaction just because of that. I go to the post very oftena and many times I saw the people refusing to pay the crazy fees. For example: if you send a 0.5 kg letter, you pay 2.40. If the letter is thick (more than 2 cm), you have to pay ... 8.50!!!!

Another really terrible CP surprise was the cancellation of "registered small packets" (I am talking here about international, NOT US packets). It almost killed my business last year! Before I was able to get a tracking number for only 11 CAD more. Now, I have to pay 35 CAD more!!! Hard to believe..??? "I am sorry for that, please call nearest post office if you don't believe.." - it's my standard response ..;-|

Now, I consider CP and lately eBay too as the "necessary evils". It's very, very sad ..;-(

Greetings to all

Andrew

[rd1000]

I was in class the other night, and the young man behind me was bragging to his buddy about the incredible amount of easy money he was making doing work for CP. He said he would get a call to go in and do an odd job, like setting up tables and chairs for something, and he would be paid $50.00 for every call. They guaranteed he would never be in for more than a half hour or so, and so far he said he hasn't. He was laughing about making $100.00 per hour.

And it goes on, and on, and on...

Rob

[2wildcatz]

Check out the services offered by USPS (and their userfriendly website) and it's easy to see how we Canadians are paying way more for much less. I've heard USPS even provides Americans with free shipping boxes! I don't know where the CanadaPost money is going, but I can assure you from first hand experience that Canadian government workers, including Canada Post workers, work their butts off for their wages. If you could see what goes on behind the scenes, the conditions they work under, and the speed of service they're expected to meet, you would be surprised.

[shoplineca]

I know first hand how some CP workers have figured out the system and slow down work immediately prior to peak periods so that they get overtime netting them over $100,000 per year as inside workers.

I also know first hand through my son's former place of employment (after RCMP investigations) the incredible amount of theft of mail, especially DVDs by some CP staff.

I also know first hand, how poor CP management is and when you combine poor management with the dishonesty of some inside workers, you have a recipe for a huge waste of money.

But aside from that, you cant compare USPS serving 330 million Americans to CP serving 31 million in a larger country, the costs of operation just arent comparable.

We want the same services at the same cost of a system whose infrastructure cost less to set up and maintain while they having a client base 10 times ours. I guess that is the problem with us Canadians living next to the US expecting that everything should be equal.

Generally the problems with USPS are greater than with CP. Frustration amongst workers there has led to several incidents of employees coming into work and killing 5 to 20 fellow employees before committing suicide, we havent gone that far yet, we just file grievances with the shop steward.

Yes they give out free boxes but insnt there another thread about CP giving out envelope mailers specially labelled for Power Sellers?

Out of approximately 10 damage claims I have filed over the last 2-years, one was for a Canadian shipment where the cost for repair was $60 Cdn and the other 9 all in the US where one of my last claims was for over $400 USD.

This is especially of interest as 75% of my customers are in Canada so the damage rate for my US shipments is very high via USPS and while it may be something happening at the border, some US customers have informed me of reocurring problems with their local post office.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Sure CP can do somethings to improve their operation and save money, who couldnt, but at least they are no longer reliant upon the Federal government to feed them money while charging us to mail our items.

One way or another you are going to pay for their service, either directly based on useage or through increased taxes by having it partially subsidized.

The reality is, there are many factors in business which makes competing with our US competitors very difficult and the fact is that we cant compete at every level.

Why dont you talk to someone at CP to see if you can get a financial reason behind their reluctance to be as price competitive on media mail as USPS is.

I think you will find that there would be NO profit in it for CP and as they are expected to not be at the Government trough anymore, it would not be a prudent business decision to subsidize that service any more than you selling at a loss solely to satsify your customers.

Malcolm