Canada Post Strike (Lettermail / Oversized Lettermail Options)

[dougieboygames]

A lot of my items I ship with Canada Post Lettermail or Oversized Lettermail. With the potential strike, what do I do with my listings? Is no other cheap shipping option in Canada?

Will buyers still be able to purchase said items, or will Lettermail not be an option during the strike?

Will I have to end all my listings that only have Lettermail shipping available?

Am I going to have to go through ALL my listings to ADD alternate shipping options?

This is the first time I may have to go through this strike and I have nothing setup for alternate shipping on ANY of my listings. I may have to place my store on vacation mode until the strike ends.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

If you are going to continue shipping lettermail during the strike, the best possible option would be to change your lettermail shipping to "economy" shipping. This will give you 15 business days to deliver it instead of 6 business days. That way, if there are rotating strikes you have more time to deliver the item before it qualifies for an INR. It also gives the buyer a more realistic shipping estimate. You can do this in you business policies page where you edit your shipping.

If there is a full strike or lockout, you may also want to consider extending your handling time to something excessive like 20 days. You could message a buyer after they purchase the item to let them know that it will ship as soon as the strike is resolves. If they decide to cancel, let them cancel. Otherwise, it ships when the strikes is over.

For people who have access to Stallion, that is an option that has rates fairly close to lettermail. It costs $6-$7 to ship to most major cities. With that said, you are likely to receive multiple orders from rural areas that they do not ship to or that they charge an excessive price to ship to. Because Stallion isn't integrated into eBay, there is no way for a buyer to know before they checkout that you can't ship to them. If you use Stallion, you may have to cancel a lot of orders. 

If you sell a high volume of items, a good strategy might be to do a mix of Stallion and Expedited Lite since in most cases the cost is similar. Extend your handling time. If the order qualifies for UniUni through Stallion, use that. If the order is to an area that only Canada Post delivers to, put it in the extended handling pile and ship it via Expedited Lite when the strike ends. 

Ultimately, there is no real substitute for oversized lettermail. There is no other service that you can send a 100g package for $2. The services that are close do not have integration with eBay, so you will run into problems where lots of orders simply do not qualify for the service. 

If you have UPS and Fedex available to you for pickups or dropoffs, I would consider adding that as a secondary option. Just make sure you use calculated shipping as their rates can vary dramatically.