Cheeky customer :)

[dipmicro]

This one comes from our website, so it's rare jewel (while it's quite common on eBay). I think his response is quite good, so I broke my rule and responded with a teeny bit of hidden irony. This was order to Australia for $2.50 and shipping was $3.50

Feb. 21: To whom it may concern, I have not recieved my order yet

Feb. 21: Your order mailed on Feb. 8, 2011 to: (address) via USPS First Class Mail. Please allow 2-4wks for delivery to Australia.

Feb 22: 2-4 weeks?!? I remember it said 5 working days That is a bit long considering the jet plane was invented in 1944 and commercialised in the 50's! Anyway thanks for at least replying and letting me know on this

Feb. 22: sorry, we do not use jet planes for delivering orders, but postal service. Unfortunately we do not control the PO delivery times. I do not mean to be argumentative, please point out where does it say 5 days for international delivery so I can have the information corrected.

Clearly he mistook our delivery estimate to USA, where we get really good service. But I think the line with jet planes was priceless, and actually he is right. Why does it take 4 weeks to deliver package internationally, when plane ride takes 15hrs? We receive our orders from China in 2 days (by DHL).

Btw. if this was on eBay, I could imagine much less civility in the inquiry.

[femmefan1946]

It might be interesting to find out how many planes land in Vancouver each day from Hong Kong (alone) and how many from Australia.

I remember when DD went to Australia, she had to fly out of Los Angeles, although that may have had something to do with the planned stopover in Bali....

Her return flight was to Vancouver by way of Japan, fwiw.

[femmefan1946]

Okay nine flights from Vancouver to Sydney on March 1, but most end up going to Los Angeles and then on to Australia. There may be fewer going to Oz than to LA.

And 35 flights going to Hong Kong the same day....

[ricarmic]

Personally I think the unpredictable delays in any international delivery is often customs (for packages of course). Although I do have to wonder how a letter takes 2 weeks to get to Oakville (a 2.5 hour ride from here) and a similar letter takes 5 days to get to Sweden.......sigh

[dipmicro]

Personally I think the unpredictable delays in any international delivery is often customs (for packages of course). Although I do have to wonder how a letter takes 2 weeks to get to Oakville (a 2.5 hour ride from here) and a similar letter takes 5 days to get to Sweden.......sigh

It's logistics plus other factors.

If CanadaPost has enough volume to certain location, they put it on the plane next day. If not, the mail can be sitting in CP warehouse even for weeks. They may choose to route the mail through another country.

Letter to Oakville in 2 weeks is pure PO incompetence. Large amount of mail gets misrouted, missorted, etc.

I have seen USPS mail (with tracking) to bounce between NY and CA 5 times. The customer did not pick it up, they send it back, NY send it back, CA send it back and this continued until someone placed yellow Undeliverable label across original receiver. But the tracking was showing all the routes 🙂

We need (r)evolution in logistics.