Oversized Lettermail being held at Gateway due to hand sorting?

[msmaggie060]

My post office told me today that not just parcels but oversized Lettermail were being held at Gateway Mississauga due to the Covid outbreak. Evidently, only letters are processed mechanically, all other mail is hand sorted and not going anywhere just now. Can anyone confirm that this is correct? 

If so, I may have to close my stores for a while until things get back to normal again.

[marnotom!]

I can't confirm what's happening with oversized lettermail at Gateway, but I can confirm that oversized letters are hand sorted as opposed to machine sorted.  I remember sending a mix of oversized and standard sized Christmas cards to people in my university residence one year, and the oversized ones arrived before the standard sized ones because they were handled differently.

[teenytrinkets]

Yes, I think there have been significant delays for oversize lettermail. I send a ton of oversize lettermail to ON (from BC) and it's taken 2-4 weeks on average. I've had three ALMOST-INRs, where buyers were getting impatient, and one INR that was closed when the buyer received the envelope just before escalation and refund.

My posties have told me oversize in bubble or cardboard is pulled. They also pull anything that has illegible handwriting. Then it's someone's job to go through that pile and decipher. That sounds fun, lol...

But, I must say, Canadian lettermail is VERY reliable. And lenient. I belong to some makeup groups online and we trade rather fat envelopes via lettermail. I've had a very low rate returned.

[kawartha-ephemera]

In my opinion, oversize Lettermail moves faster when the postage is paid at a CP counter. Once the clerk measures, weighs and slaps that printed postage label on there it's good to go for the duration. In the past, on those rare occasions I've fielded "it hasn't arrived yet"  messages, those are the ones that had stamps slapped on them and dropped somewhere.  Those I think are inspected somewhere along the way, slows them down a bit.

[lady.stark]

I shipped an oversided lettermail on Jan 12 going to TX, USA. Buyer left me positive feedback after just one week. That was really fast!

[msmaggie060]

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@lady.stark wrote:

I shipped an oversided lettermail on Jan 12 going to TX, USA. Buyer left me positive feedback after just one week. That was really fast!

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Yes, all my oversized letterpost items have been delivered fairly fast but those were before the Gateway outbreak. I wonder about all the ones I  mailed this week, they were a mixture of letterpost and small Pkt. Also, the ones I will be mailing next week.

[femmefan1946]

Then it's someone's job to go through that pile and decipher.

I met that bunch in Ottawa some years (decades?) ago.

They used to be called the Dead Letter Office.

They were the workers who had been injured on the job, had recuperated enough to return to work (some out of boredom), but not enough to be back on the line or going door to door with 50lb sacks of mail.

We were dropping off philatelic auction catalogues paid with lots of pretty stamps and they were postmarking them by hand. They actually welcomed us since the job was more pleasant than deciphering handwriting.

It doesn't surprise me that the hand sorted items move faster. The standard ones had to have their postal codes read and entered before they could be machine sorted. Two steps instead of one.