How is all coping with the Canada Post strike

[blackvelvetvintage]

How are sellers coping with the Canada Post strike?

[mrdutch1001]

Waiting it out until Canada Post gets itself sorted...

"Time Away" and Extended handling time works just fine...

preparing the household for the Christmas season decor...

The smell of Christmas baking will soon fill the house...

Will look to January for some online sales...

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@blackvelvetvintage wrote:

How are sellers coping with the Canada Post strike?

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Hmmm...To put it in a nutshell:

[femmefan1946]

I stopped listing, just making up drafts.

No new listings (almost) no new sales.

So there's that.

[wonsxela]

I've only had one upset buyer so far who filed a case against me despite knowing all about this, and a couple of polite cancellations. Most people are being nice about it and are still willing to wait.

[john_koenig99]

Not well. I have 8 orders stuck who knows where, and who knows if/when I am going to get them. 5 of them are from the US. The tracking stopped after being shipped from eBay's shipping hub, right around the time the strike started. 

From the sales perspective, you can imagine, Traffic on my listings pretty much died. And a sale fell through because the buyer thought the price of shipping was unreasonable...Well, I'm quoting what UPS is quoting. Every carrier jacked up their prices, to take advantage of the situation.

I'm for once will never go back to CP after the strike, unless they ship for free. LOL.

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

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@john_koenig99 wrote:

Not well. I have 8 orders stuck who knows where, and who knows if/when I am going to get them. 5 of them are from the US. The tracking stopped after being shipped from eBay's shipping hub, right around the time the strike started. 

From the sales perspective, you can imagine, Traffic on my listings pretty much died. And a sale fell through because the buyer thought the price of shipping was unreasonable...Well, I'm quoting what UPS is quoting. Every carrier jacked up their prices, to take advantage of the situation.

I'm for once will never go back to CP after the strike, unless they ship for free. LOL.

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@john_koenig99 

Your shipments from the USA if they were tied to eIS most likely will be forwarded through DHL for end of mile. Tracking will get "eventually" updated but not until they have been handed off to them. The excess volume at this time of year usually causes additional delays. The CP strike will have its own influences on what is going on. 

[marnotom!]

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@john_koenig99 wrote:

Every carrier jacked up their prices, to take advantage of the situation.

I'm for once will never go back to CP after the strike, unless they ship for free. LOL.

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Interesting logic. You’d be willing to keep working with carriers that raised their prices to take advantage of the situation that forced you to use them in the first place?

[john_koenig99]

The orders show ASENDIA tracking numbers and links, but they all show USPS details when you click on them. And also CP tracking numbers that, of course, are DOA.

I was hoping that they will switch to DHL, but it seems that they are in USPS possesion, and they say in their communique about CP's strike that those parcels will be "stored and locked" until the strike ends. I think I'm SOL. 

[john_koenig99]

They'll probably stabalize their prices afterwards. But even if they don't, I rather give them my business as oppossed to the ones who screwed us up, in the first place. 

[mrdutch1001]

for some us the convenience,easy access to and the cheaper shipping methods for some mail categories of Canada Post is still worth our loyalty to Canada Post...I have been using Canada Post for nearly 7 decades for personal and nearly 6 decades for business reasons..

[2nd-time-around-jewelry]

I've switched over to using UPS.  Been printing up the labels through eBay. I noticed that small parcels (under 100 grams) cost more to send than Canada Post but larger parcels are a better price through UPS. Yesterday I sent a small parcel under 100 grams to the US for $17.61. Today I sent a similar parcel & UPS increased the prices to $19.98. I guess they are taking advantage of us sellers.

[mrdutch1001]

I considered UPS but am now checking out Purolator through netParcel and if necessary may revive an old PayPal account to do so If the Strike continues with no end in sight...

[marnotom!]

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@2nd-time-around-jewelry wrote:

Yesterday I sent a small parcel under 100 grams to the US for $17.61. Today I sent a similar parcel & UPS increased the prices to $19.98. I guess they are taking advantage of us sellers.

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Did the second item have further to travel than the first one, though? UPS doesn’t have flat-rate “Small Packets” the way Canada Post does, if memory serves.

[mrdutch1001]

UPS can be "reasonable" for shipping major centre to major centre(Large city to large city) but otherwise their shipping costs can get ridiculous...

[sin-n-dex]

Aside from the four sales that are stuck in Canada Post Limbo, my Canada sales have been non existant since the start of the strike. I ship with Stallion Express for US shipments, so at least I can still do some online business.

I'd say I'm coping OK and weathering the storm... I had time away for a month before the strike started (came back, turned my store on for a day or two, had some Canada sales, then the strike notice went out). So if I get a bit of a break not doing Canadian orders I'm dealing with it. Nothing I can do about it anyway, and because of what I ship, Canada Post is the most practical solution for shipping in Canada.

Now other people I know (who are not on eBay but running mail order business where they rely on Canada Post to ship to Rural Newfoundland and such), are not doing so well. Sales are way down, courier costs are too high to use and still be profitable on what they sell, they're taking orders but people aren't placing them.

At my work, the mailroom is filled with bins of letters advising people on their benfits, cheques for vendors (and anyone who isn't set up for EFT with us for their benefits), and files are left in limbo as the communication ceases between us and the client (where everything is in writing).

So for lots of people I know, the strike is a pretty bleepy situation... I think it's time they get back to work. 2 weeks is long enough to seriously disrupt everything.

C.