Sellers: Did Canada Post Raise Their Rates Recently?

[needsmorerobots]

I started selling over the summer here on eBay Canada. I sell movies and music albums in any format. This venture is a hobby and to make a little money on the side.

The issue I'm having is with with shipping a single DVD or Blu-ray to the United States in a 7 1/2 by 9 1/4 bubble mailer. The customers pay for the cost of small packets USA by air mail. Now over the summer, if I can recall, that was about $4.50. Then the price jumped to about near $5.30.

Yesterday A customer paid over $5 for shipping to the USA but the cost came out to a whopping $9. I almost went nuts. I told the person at the Canada Post desk "you changed your rates again!" to which she replied the rates were still the same and hadn't changed. I told her no way and mentioned the previous prices I had paid. Her new answer was the US does not allow anything that is not paper to be shipped under the small packets classification.

Are they jerking me around, is the employee incompetent or is this true? Has any Canadian sellers encountered this? I ask because in the past I was almost charged $16 for the same thing until I put my foot down and the person realized their mistake. In another incident I paid about $20 because Canada Post said a DVD set was barely fitting through their mail slot board and that it might get returned to me if the postie decided it couldn't be delivered (or in my opinion, do their actual job).

If this is real, it sinks any thoughts of selling DVD/CDs/Blu-rays to the US. Who in the US will pay $9 Canadian for shipping when they can have the item shipped domestically or internationally for cheaper.

[luckylegend]

Well if the shipping costs 62$ because you are shipping to thr UK i would consider a 20% saving... it’s 12$ off...no?

[83northsurplus]

Various threads on the go here...

The Shopify $299 I was referring to is in their plan structure.  Basically, if you pay them for the top end service, they give you the same rates you can earn at Canada Post without having to earn them. 

Canada Post has five savings levels for small businesses.  These are on top of "Grandma" rates.  So here is the breakdown:

Grandma takes her package to the post office counter and pays full retail rate.

Level 1 in person, saves you up to 5% on shipping costs when you take your package to the counter.  This is the only savings you can get at the counter - even if you spend mega bucks on shipping.

Levels 2-4 save 19% / 25% / 33% on parcels.   Level 2 requires an annual spend of $2,500.  Level 3 is $5,000 and Level 4 is $7,500.  The level four rates at the SAME rates as a commercial contract level A - so you get the same discount as if you are shipping five items per day on average.

Shopify lets you jump the levels - if you pay their (expensive) monthly fee for their service you can get up to 40% off Canada Post without having to have that volume.

Its a similar concept to what we are doing for our clients.  We sell on Ebay, Walmart, etc so we are packing everyday anyway.  We rent our shipping to them - their items are stocked here in Manitoba and we ship them as required.  We all end up paying the lower rates. 

On the discount stamp front - there are cheaper stamps from Costco.  There are also older stamps selling on ebay and elsewhere for less than their actual value.  But they come in all sorts of weird amounts.  You have to do the math.  The bigger deal is... they only work at best at Level 1 Counter rates - so your actual cost to send the parcel is never more than 5% discounted.  If you buy the label online you get a 9% discount.  If you buy a lot you get 33%.  No matter how cheap the stamps are its very hard to say the time to get them, count them and then pay counter rate is worth it compared to saving more by purchasing electronically.

On the average shipment we save $4 to $5 compared to the counter rates.  Do that enough times a day and its a small fortune. 

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

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@luckylegend wrote:
Well if the shipping costs 62$ because you are shipping to thr UK i would consider a 20% saving... it’s 12$ off...no?

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Discount stamps, the cheaper ones anyway, are usually in the denominations of 30 cents or less... so assuming you are using 30 cents stamps, you would need to stick Two Hundred and Six 30 cents stamp + One 20 cents stamp on the package. Would your package have enough room for that many stamps? The saving is also proportionally less when your postage is over $5 as you don't need to pay tax for postage over $5. 

If you are using permanent stamps (which is valued at 90 cents each right now), you'd still need to stick Sixty-Nine of them on your package... is there enough room for them? And you can't get permanent stamps at 20% discount, so the time spent is hardly worth the effort unless you're already in the discount stamp business and can access the vintage stamps at a heavy discount.

I still have roughly $50 worth of stamps at home that I haven't used since I don't really find them worth my time to use nowadays as they are rather inconvenient to use. The odd time I use them is for domestic lettermail or x'mas cards lol. I use Shippo for all of my small packets now for the barcode that comes with it 

Attached is how my domestic lettermail (it's for a book) looked like. 14 and 15 cents stamps were used, for a $3.12 letter. 

[mama_bundy]

all above true plus Canada Post adding on an additional 15% / 26% gas or transportation surcharge to packages & parcels depending on shipping method. Try sending a 500 gram package of 3 egg cups to Newfoundland from Ontario and it comes out as 35.00 same to Yukon & BC - forces seller to use prepaid shipping boxes of 20.00 [ approx. with tax ] but sadly they are sometimes just not deep enough. FYI most shops sold out too. 

[ypdc_dennis]

You tacked onto a ZOMBIE thread from 2019 which has lots of out-of-date information.

P stamps are now worth 92 cents.

Letterpost to USA/Int'l is getting bounced back in 2022 if it contains more than paper. Canada Post got more serious about enforcing the paper-only rule this year.  Still fine for shipping dvds/cds/thin books via lettermail in Canada.

The Canada Post fuel surcharge is up significantly over the last 3 months (caused by the Russia-Ukraine war effect on fuel supplies). There will be another increase June 6.

You mention flate rate boxes being sold out locally. They can be ordered from Canada Post directly (with free shipping) -- but you need to buy 12 at once.

-;-

[darak10]

Ive charged 9.23 Can to US customers for the last several years and do really well selling these items there.  American buyers have absolutely no problem buying a quality item that is harder to find and priced more affordably than other sellers.  Quite a few sellers' pricing are completely out to lunch, I dont know how some these folks make a single sale.  

Concerning what you've noticed, I've noticed it concerning international shipments to Australia and Europe.  The basic rate has not been increasing, what is increasing continually, it went up again recently, is that Canada Post are increasing their fuel surcharges on a pretty regular basis.  I've had to up my shipping rate to Australia twice in the last couple months as it keeps increasing.  Annoying as it is I understand why they are doing it but it becomes a very problematic make work project to keep changing and makes me wonder if the best solution is to just stop selling to these places altogether until it stabilizes at some point god knows when in the future.  

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

-You can order flat rate boxes online in packs of 12. Small Flat Rate boxes are now comparable/cheaper than labels are even with the eBay or Ssmall Business discount.

-I would advise anybody with the cash flow and volume to purchase Flat Rate boxes now. Who knows if they go out of stock online, or Canada Post eventually raises the price. Similar to P-Stamps, you lock in the rate since they do not expire. 

-If you do not want to use flat rate boxes, you can buy rolls of 100 P-Stamps at Costco, you get a 5 percent discount. These can be used as currency to pay for parcel rates at regular Canada Post outlets. For example, if a parcel is going to be $20 after your small business discount, you would put 22 P-stamps on it. You'd save $1. Whether this hassle is worth it, is up to you.

Then two abstract ways to save money on shipping. First is to sign up for the credit card with the best possible cash back/rewards program. If you sell 25 items a month, and on average it costs $20 to ship them, that would be $6000 a year spent on shipping. At 1 percent, that's $60 back. At 2 percent, that's $120 back. Add in that a lot of cards have different incentives like spend x amount in x time, get a bonus of a few hundred dollars. Even a small or part time eBay business might have five figures in expenses, so that's a way to make back a small amount of what you spend. 

The second abstract way is to register to collect GST/HST for July 1st 2022. eBay is going to collect this for every seller, regardless of whether they are signed up. If you sign up, you can claim any GST or HST you pay on business expenses (supplies, cost of goods, etc). Because eBay will collect the GST/HST anyways, by registering, you're putting yourself in a position to get what will act like a refund for all the GST/HST you spend. Let's just say that $6000 a year for shipping we used in the previous example was all flat rate boxes purchased in Ontario at 13 percent HST. If you are registered for HST, you will be able to claim the $700 of that $6000 that was HST. Which effectively will make your cost of shipping cheaper. Usually this wouldn't be advisable for smaller sellers, but because eBay is going to raise your prices by charging GST/HST, you migh tas well register and benefit from lowering your input costs.