Canada Post Rates Rant

I too sent out a small envelope today, June 2, 2008 and was shocked to pay $11.00 for a 6 business day delivery. Tonight I reviewed UPS rates and found that for $14.95 I could have sent the same envelope and had it in Calgary within 2 days. Canada Post rates definitely need to be looked at.

I sell allot of stuff on ebay , while I use to ! Canada Post has made it to difficult to sell medium and large size parcels s/h cost more then the parcels ! I think the dollar when it was 67 cents was adjusted for the US dollar, but now that its even par there is a 33 cent adjustment that has never been made and when the post office does a gas surcharge they always go up ,but when the price of gas goes down , you never see the surcharge go down !!! Its frustrating I know !
Car

I own Floating Point Digital Images, and frequently send long, thin boxes containing prints, decals - that kind of stuff.

Last year I tried to mail a 30"x4"x4" box, but neither the local post-office nor the online shipping tool could calculate a rate for it, so I couldn't send it. Had the box been 30"x6"x6", then I could have. In the end I ended up using FedEx who quite happily sorted it out for me.

I have the SAME problem.

I had two 9 x 7 envelopes. Both VERY light.

I sent one to Toronto from Scarborough and it cost me about 7 dollars.

I sent one to Conneticut from Scarborough and it cost me about 4 dollars and change.

AND the one I sent to Conneticut was SMALLER AND LIGHTER.

Figure that one out.

Why is it more expensive to send to your OWN province as opposed to sending to a DIFFERENT COUNTRY?!

Canada Post is the reason people go "Postal". I almost did recently in a drug store CP outlet. 4 - 5 day delivery of a birthday card to the US....13.00+ change!!!! Slow boat to China (rather, in this case, Tucson)...1.15. It arrived within 8 days.
Don't even consider getting your mail held or forwarded for any length of time. This is a FREE service in the United States. Here it costs more than your damn vacation almost.
I just wish there was something we could do about the rediculous prices and, I must say, often lousy service.
I am just preparing to send out a box of Christmas gifts from Edmonton to the West Coast. CP will probably cost me more than the value of what's inside. Greyhound has gone up considerably over time even tho the price of fuel has come down. I don't expect any of the courier services are cheap. Oh well, after all...it is Christmas. Have a happy one!

I imagine that letters, small parcels, and large parcels go through different sorting and routing machines / procedures. Letters are fairly uniform, so they can probably be separated, oriented, sorted, and routed completely mechanically. Packages may require some manual intervention, or at least bigger and more complex machines. So the fixed price for letters is probably far smaller than for parcels, and they don't even need to charge for weight if it doesn't gum up their machines. That would explain the big jump in price you saw.

has anyone notice the fee cp charges if you don't get your parcel to the postal outlet before the truks leave . Twice now I have noticed an extra fee on my mile long bill for not getting to the post office before the 2:30 deadline {this is the time the trucks are leaving for the day to take mail and percels on their way}.

THE FOLLOWING IS FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. It is MY material, but as soon as you use anything written below, it becomes YOUR material and your method. Own your actions. And life is supposed to be entertaining, after all. I would like to thank all the numerous people who have contributed material before.

David,

If it were me I would check to see if the same framework, mentioned below, exists in the land known as Canada. The Canadian Postal Service pre-dates the CANADA POST Corporation and the corporation called CANADA (check out sec.gov, do an Edgar search for CANADA). What were the rates of the de jure (legitimate) Canadian Postal Service? Can you send mail non-domestic within the land commonly known as Canada? I bet you can...

Google: sending non-domestic mail without the U.S.
Found: http://www.unitedstatesofrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/non-domestic-...

* Edit: I found some mistakes and they are noted in the version below.

* Edit: Men and man is a gender-neutral term. Woman is the female, wereman is male. Hence the terms 'Mankind' and 'Werewolf'. Perceptions my statement rubs you funny are due to the single doctrine of dumbed-down Corporate education, television, radio, newspapers and magazines you have received n' believed. "Have no Gods before me."

* Edit: To get the idea of differences between living man and fictional STRAWMAN in your head, I might suggest thinking about a professional who does his job, comes home and becomes a father or mother, a completely different (and 'schizophrenic') role change. This is how one physical location can have two names, one to identify the location, and a second which resembles the first but is in fact a fictional ADDRESS within the Corporation, another fiction. Corporations, being fictions on a piece of paper, can only interface with other fictions, and living men only when they sign as the fiction.

How to send mail for 2 cents for ½ ounce and 4 cents per 1 ounce.
2 cent rate for non-domestic mail. DOMESTIC (within the U.S. Government Corporation) – versus non-domestic (without government, between private living men). Capitalization of domestic is for emphasis.

The writer gives an example. But if I were doing it, it might say the following:
Jack-Michael: Doe
c/o 400 Big Mountain Road
Stone Ridge, New York state,
non-domestic without the U.S.

The writer gives the example "near (12484)-9999"
Anything with a ZIP code on it puts it in DOMESTIC mail.
It might be possible to add [12345], as anything within four corners on a legal document does not exist unless specifically included in the main text. I am almost certain postal clerks will say 'The mail cannot be delivered (domestically) without a ZIP code'. And they are correct. Tell them you want it delivered non-domestically, without the U.S.

If it were me, as a test I might first send without any Corporate (ZIP) codes a few letters to friends.

I'm guessing the Canadian Postal Service (non-corporate, as inherited by CANADA POST) follows the same format for non-domestic:
Jim-Anthony: Fraser
c/o 400 Big Mountain Road
Stone Ridge, province of Ontario ('Province of Ontario' should be written however you write the name to mean the traditional area, not the de facto Corporate jurisdiction)
non-domestic without CANADA

Note: Jim-Anthony: Fraser is shorthand for 'Jim-Anthony of the Fraser family', and about as distinct from writing the legal fiction JIM ANTHONY FRASER as I can imagine. Notice how the former emphasises the family, while the latter emphasises the individual. I think there is no co-incidence there.

Don't assume these are any better. I sent a book off to England March 9 Small Packet Surface (I was paying the postage). The delivery standard for surface - 4-6 weeks. It still hasn't arrived! Even in the days of sail it could have crossed the Atlantic 4 to 5 times.

Wow...nice blog...at least we can commiserate with each other...

I have a warehouse in Florida where my product comes in from Sweden. I had a shipment sent to Canada for shipping to Canadians. I am paying $1.49 to ship to the continental US and $1.69 to ship to anywhere in Canada from Florida. When I got my product here in Canada I went to the post office here in New Westminster with the intention of sending a small 6x9 padded envelope (the same I use in the US) with one box of product that weighs almost nothing. The cost? $10.34! Why? because it almost fits through the letter slot...almost. Because it doesn't fit it is $10.34...well needless to say I sent my product back to Florida and have it shipped from there to my Canadian customers. My total cost per package with the padded envelope and the cost of mailing is under $2.00 US Over $11.00 in Canada. It takes a couple of extra days to get here but the customers understand because they know it is coming from the US. What would you do?

yes, the difference in costs is a total scam and money grab. Most packages i send out to the US are border line $20-30. A friend of mine send a boxed package to me a few years ago that cost $3. anything equivalent at the time would have cost me about $8-10. Last year, i got a poster from alaska and i noticed postage was $4.50 or so. I'm in Ontario. Out of curiousity, i didn't leave the post office and asked how much to send the same package back to the originating address. she told me just under $18. That's a 4 times the cost. somebody is making a ton of money out of this

I was considering starting an online business, selling possibley on Ebay and or Etsy. The only way I can make it pay is if I only sell internationally, using Canada Post's small packet service. I cannot afford to ship inside Canada. Canadians are forced to buy outside of Canada to keep shipping costs reasonable! Sellers are losing sales. All my research points to me refusing to ship inside of Canada. Insane!

~k

I have a book store in Amazon.ca Marketplace, and the price Amazon.ca gives is only $6.49. So we got a small business account for Canada Post, and it gives "expedited parcel" for business accounts at the same time, but as this post, what I am wondering is if you send a mail with lettermail, it is only $2 something but with parcel it is well over $10. That is just shocking. I wonder what is the difference in them.

I just shipped a vhs taped to St John's Nfld it cost me $13.45, just because the item could not fit letter mail by just a fraction of cm. How can Canadians compete on an international stage when they are gouged to this degree. Canada post beat me into to submission with their yearly rate increases and constant price structure changes. I gave up both my Ebay and Amazon business out to pure frustration with Canada post.

I ended up at this page for the same reason as most--frustration at the high prices and inequity at Canada Post. Another example is the "fuel surcharge". Recently it was levied at a dollar for an expresspost letter, and for a package weighing 25 times as much, the same amount. Nonsensical! Consumer gouging! Standing at the counter, what can you say. The unionized employee serving you will just tell you to write to head office, it's got nothing to do with me.
If only that were true.
I too am setting up a business that will rely heavily on shipping small parcels. I am horrified at knowing how shipping charges will cut into my sales, and the same old thing as everyone else--it will be cheaper for me to ship to the US, and prohibitive to ship overseas.
So all you Canada Post employees, and management--don't expect public sympathy next time you go on strike, or are faced with rounds of layoffs. If you were an entrepreneur, you would be facing the real world, and being gouged at every turn by smug unionized services who don't consider who are paying for their benefits and job security.
The question is--what can be done? Not like I can buy a horse and start up my own pony express.

I am an eBay seller and I hate Canada Post.
I asked at the Post Office why Canada Post rates are so ridiculously expensive compared to USPS. To ship a package overseas using Small Packet Air is over $30.00 if the package is over 500g. I understand the USPS charges only a fraction of this to ship overseas, like under $10. The rude woman at the counter had no answer for me.
I generate more income for Canada Post than I do for myself. I can't compete with U.S. sellers. I can't ship a VHS tape within Canada for under $11, but I can order one from California and pay only $4 shipping. Canada Post is terrible for small business in Canada. I wish that there was some competition in this country, perhaps a flat-rate box that wasn't a ridiculous scam or media mail rate.

Wow, its mind boggling when you see the comaprision of sending something to Canada V/S somewhere else in the world! I was one of those angry frustrated costumer backin the days. Thats how I ended up seeing this blog..what a great peice! I read so many different blog posts and comments on the internet and tried digging up some resources for myselfto see how I could truly save and not end up paying an arm and a leg on a silly 1kg parcel. Then, I bumped into this company called Shipito. Wow, they gave me amzingly low rates for sending my parcels to Canada. Hope this info helps!

It's funny to read people complaining about the mail system in other countries. Here in the UK we have at minimum 2 distruption each year when postal workers or sorting office staff go on strike. The workers always seem to have their problems just before Christmas and threaten strikes for most of November/December with 1 or 2 walkouts just to show how much distruption they can cause. Postal service the wolrd over has its problems but we just have to find different ways around them.

Canada Post sucks the wad, big time. I recently moved to Canada from USA, and USPS is cheaper and far superior in every way.

For example: if you move ANYWHERE in USA, you simply fill out the moving form or do it online and its done, FREE. Canada Post, I just discovered will charge me $80 to forward my mail as I moved from TO to Vancouver, inter-province. Within province: $69!

Further: hold mail in USA with USPS is FREE. Period. Doesn't matter how long. Fuckin' Canada Post charges you LOADS of money--$30 and up!!!!!!!!!!

They suck, they suck, they suck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How do you Canadians put up with this bullshit from your government post office?

I know there's loads of problems in USA where Canada seems to do a better job, but clearly USPS is MUCH BETTER and provides these services FOR FREE, wheras crappy Canada Post just wants to screw Canadians out of every effin' nickel, dime and dollar they can get.

....I'm NOT using them. I'm simply notifying folks of my new address myself. It makes me so pissed off because I'm used to how good USPS is/was, and now I'm stuck with these losers :-(

I know my friend Lisa who is a Manager at Canada Post Distribution in Vancouver tells me that they are having such huge problems with letter carriers who are running show. It is because of their Union and their membership is to why your parcel doesn't get the respect it should have.

The many merchants who run a Canada Post retail are doing their darnedest hard working giving you great customer skills, sadly your goods get delivered when its Canada Post Union members time.

I have dealt with many lazy Canada Post clerks on Pine and west 8th in Vancouver. They are awful. They tell me 2 days with Priority from Their location to Moncton New-Brunswick and it arrives 5 days later. I go back and they gang up on me to tell me they never said that.. wtf?? Its not the first time i have had problems with those idiots at that location.

Now i take my business to UPS on Broadway.. much better and actually faster and on time tracking that only cost me $4 more, and the service, they actually repack if needed free of charge.

I no longer get USPS from California and Florida to be shiped to Vancouver has it takes 23 days , now i get it shipped to a US/Canada border address that only takes 2 days.

What Canada post does, it gets all USPS to ship from any US points to New_york State, then it goes to Mississauga Distribution than it gets put on a truck to Vancouver.

If i order something from New Jersey, it goes to Mississauga than Vancouver in 4 days

if my sister ships something from Mississauga to Vancouver, it takes 7 days. what is wrong with this picture?

I BELIEVE CANADA POST CORPORATION SHOULD CHANGE THEIR NAME AND FIRE ALL CANADA POST UNION EMPLOYEES> WE WOULD GET MUCH BETTER SERVICE! Hire a 3rd company like Aramark or Sodexo to hire contract workers. You don't need a grade 6 education to do what they do for such a overpaid work and we end up paying for their lazy work and customer service.. we no longer have Value and they no longer have work ethics

I totally agree that Canada Post rates are too expensive. I gave up my online business because of it and had to go back to a regular job. Coincidentally I wound up casual / part time at a Canada Post office and I can see both sides of the issue.

At Canada Post we work hard. Working in the back, sorting and hauling packages around is filthy work, and physically demanding. Working in the front has its own set of challenges. There is so much to learn, everything has to be quickly done yet precise, and you have to smile and put up with cranky miserable demanding customers bitching and complaining about prices and Canada Posts policies... neither of which you have absolutely any control over. The union is actually so crappy that the employer is allowed to work you up to 6 hours with one 10 minute break, some shifts are only 2 lousy hours, and the wages aren't that great either considering what you have to do. The job is damned hard. Most shifts are part time. The problem is that the place is run as a corporation and everything has to make a profit so that the managers and CEO types can get their big wages. And the fact that as another poster above mentioned, we are subsidizing the mail being able to get to the whole country including remote areas with the rates.

The union has nothing to do with the problems at Canada Post. I get really pissed when people say that union workers are making too much money, like we should be trying to scrape by on minimum wage or something. I could not live off the paycheck I get from the few hours I get at Canada Post and believe me I would not be going in to sort mail at 6 am for a lousy 2 hour shift if they weren't paying $17 bucks an hour and I didn't live 5 minutes away from the post office. Its barely worth it for that, and it certainly would not be worth it for minimum wage. If wages were taken away from us as some here advocate, you would wind up with the same sort of problem as when the BC Liberal party busted the hospital unions and lowered the wages on the workers and now the hospitals are filthy and full of superbugs. Lets put it this way... if minimum wage workers were sorting and delivering your mail you'd be lucky to get it and it wouldn't be in very good condition if you did. And I bet the ones who are saying that we're making too much aren't working for minimum wage themselves.

I was just at the Canada mail website checking out the increase in rates they want for next month. Their reason? decreased volume, so they have to increase revenue by raising their rates. This is no way to increase volume. No real business could get away with it. The whole outfit is walking off a cliff. What we need in Canada is a wide open field where anyone can start a letter carrier business, not another gov't monopoly.

PS the guy with the book to mail should rip it in half down the spine and send it as two letters.

PPS the other day I was sending out my Christmas cards. I had made a ittle homemade booklet, so it was overweight, and in a larger than normal envelope - a lettersize folded in half, maybe 6 pages. I figured it'd cost me 2 stamps to mail it and I was ok with that. So the worker asks me what's in the envelope as if it's her business. Now, having read this whole fantastic blog, I think I get it: she was trying to figure out if I had slipped anything in there that wasn't paper, 'coz, according to one or two of the writers here, lettermail has to be paper only. I never knew that.

I started out writing about Canada Post's policy. Now, I have a policy of my own. Never tell government the truth. They lie, cheat, steal, and generally screw up people's lives. We owe them nothing, and I certainly have never felt any obligation to be truthful to the bastards.

Actually what we need in Canada is a few good men to form a party that will fearlessly sweep all the crap and corruption away from every department. What fun!

This is a very old post that is still drawing comments - which says to me that nothing has changed at Canada Post since 2006.

This year, my daughter's Christmas gift was sent ExpressPost on Dec 23 and has not arrived - it's Dec. 28. I checked the status of the package and all it says is that the package was received by the post office at the departure site. I would appreciate knowing at least the expected delivery date.

I did a blog post on this very topic back in March 2009. http://www.mudcreative.com/life-in-general/post-office-blues/

Honestly, I have given up on this sorry, substandard service completely. And, it's only a matter of time before everyone else does the same. Soon the Canadian Postal Service will simply be no more. Oh well....

I am so glad I am not the only person who thinks Canada Post is totally warped in their pricing.
I beat my head against this stuff every day in my business. Logic does not apply to Canada Post. It's a completely inefficient and insanely run corporation.
Thank you for taking the time to show examples of this.

Hello All,

I have recently been in contact with SVP Operations Douglas Jones. I tried a few combination's until I got no rejection and he replied. He maid a promise and like most Canada Post / Government FAILED to FOLLOW through. My package is still STUCK in the system.

doug.jones@canadapost.postescanada.ca
Doug Jones
Senior Vice President, Operations
Premièr vice-président, Opérations

following the above it should work for all of the MANAGEMENT TEAM at Canada Post.

http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/aboutus/corporate/management/default.jsf

Moya Greene moya.greene@canadapost.postescanada.ca
CEO
Jacques Cote jacques.cote@canadapost.postescanada.ca
COO
Stewart Bacon stewart.bacon@canadapost.postescanada.ca
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer

Wayne Cheeseman wayne.cheeseman@canadapost.postescanada.ca
Chief Financial Officer

Laurene Cihosky laurene.cihosky@canadapost.postescanada.ca
Direct Marketing, Advertising & Publishing Business

Cal Hart cal.hart@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Postal Transformation

Peter Melanson peter.melanson@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Enterprise Sales

Louis F. O'Brien louis.obrien@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Chief Customer Officer

Mary Traversy mary.traversy@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Transaction Mail

John Duncan john.duncan@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Human Resources

Douglas Jones douglas.jones@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Operations

Philip Ventura philip.ventura@canadapost.postescanada.ca
SVP, Strategy

The crazy postage rates are exactly why despite a thriving online economy existing on the same landmass to the south it's pretty much dead up in Canada.

Canada Post does not have a "small Packet" rate within Canada. I think implementing one would greatly reduce the cost of those items which fall in the (too small to be a letter and not big enough to be a parcel) category.

Because Canada Post is a National Mail Provider, they must service the entire country. So, there is no doubt the larger centers are subsidizing the rural areas. It is not a perfect system, but it certainly beats the alternative which would be private companies who would only provide service to the MOST Profitable areas of the country. Those outside of the "lucrative" areas would be paying exorbitant rates for even a letter to be mailed.

Is 57 cents really that expensive to mail a letter anywhere in Canada? That's a lot of distance for a bit of small change.

So, the system is not all bad and certainly has room for improvement...as does every business.

A "small packet" rate for Canada would go a long way to getting rid of those complaints where people feel they have been charged too much. The clerks can only go by the rules that are set out by the Corp. In fact, I've found the opposite to be true (than has been stated by others). I've found you can often get a better price at a private outlet because the clerk is not fully trained. Many times I've seen them put a couple dollars postage on an item that would be considered to be a parcel...if they knew better than just to weigh the item. The reason for these private outlets is simply cost savings. Canada Post does not pay these people much above minimum wage. As the old adage goes "you get what you pay for".

Canada Post was killing my business and in turn has harmed themselves. I have no pity for this company and refuse to ship international packages through them. I own an on-line business and I had two separate parcels to ship to London, England. I have a US address that we have parcels shipped to so we can broker our own items (Brokerage charges are another sore spot). We decided to ship one parcel from Canada and one from MI. Canada - $100 Canadian - 6- 8 WEEKS US - $100 US - 6 - 7 Business DAYS When tracking the Canadian parcel it was showing as sitting in Montreal waiting to leave the country while the other parcel had been delivered to the customer.

I've mailed two dvd's - one to the U.S - one to Australia. The one to the U.S (virgina) took 14 days. The one to Austrailia took 6 days.

As for brokerage fees, Canada Post is much, much cheaper than anything I've ever received via UPS.

Not only that Canada Post is too expensive.. but their pricing is extremely inconsistent.

I know very well about their rates, all the specifications, their measurements limits, both for small/large letters and packages, etc.

But what I'd really love to know is:
how can it be, that the cost I pay for sending same item I've sent before and know how much it should cost - in envelope of same dimensions, with same weight and same height, to same country - keeps changing?

One time they charge one price, other time they charge double.
One time they process it as 'Letter', the other time as 'Light Packet', some other time as 'Small Packet'.

I wonder if it's the mood of the person behind the counter our costs depend on, or their (in)competence?
Probably both.

From office to office, they will give you a different price for mailing the same thing. From occasion to occasion, they will give you a different price in the same office, for the same thing going to the same country.

Outlets/offices do whatever they please, Canada Post is ignoring it all together, and we, of course!, are getting ripped off.

Crazy relevant old post. Obviously relevant still. Noticed an insightfull post regarding CP's notice regarding the increase of rates due to lower volume. No Sh*t!! (pardon) If you price yourself out of the market, you lose business. Get ready for exponential losses if they raise rates any more.

However, that said, if you control the market, you set the rates.

So... Where is everyone going with their oversized parcel these days? Let's hear what we're doing to succeed outside of CP? I do know that they have a flat rate box for use with Ebay exclusively. However I have high end bike frames and other very light, yet large size product to ship. Looks like UPS so far??

Great discussion.

The current Canada Post rates have been a hugh obstacles for small medium enterprise wishing to tap on international market.

If you want to contribute your say in this, please sign on the No To Canada Post Expensive Rates petition here

You can also join the Facebook group "No To Canada Post Rates"

I just want to address some peoples' comments and questions on here, with the small amount I have learned from complaining by phone to Canada Post.I too, have been enraged by CP's system of price gouging the consumer (us) with ridiculous rates. Last year, when I called to complain, what I found out was this; in 2008 (or close to that) CP decided to quietly discontinue their small packet rate for packages mailed within Canada to other Canadian destinations, citing low usage by consumers for this sort of option. Now, anything that is not a document/paper/card/printed material of any sort cannot be mailed via "lettermail" option, regardless of dimension or weight. The reason given to me on the phone with CP was that "lettermail" goes through a machine which might break anything other than printed materials, like a cd or dvd, even though the height of the package is within their stated limits. Having eliminated that loophole for us, and with no "small packet" option, everything else falls under a "parcel" rate, which automatically starts at around $9 Can. If you wanted to mail a cd, it's $9.00. I have been told by a Postal outlet worker you can try to just put a bunch of stamps on it (say $4 worth) and stick it in a mail box, and normally it will arrive just fine. I have not tried this yet myself, but said person has done so many times with no problems.

For the record, I have not had many problems with Canada Post in regards to their delivery of mail, and beyond the price gouge, have no complaints of merit towards them.

Depending on what you are trying to mail out within Canada, it may be worth it to check out UPS or some other courier service. I will say though that I find UPS delivery (in Canada) to be terrible with policies like "if nobody's home, we will leave your package with your neighbour". Also, their brokerage fees from packages arriving into Canada from outside, are outrageous.

So I came across this rant and I am always tracking and looking for ways to improve efficiencies for my business. I ship and recieve on average 30 parcels per month from across North America. Now the one thing I haven't noticed here is anyone acknowledging that Canada Post frequently delivers within the minimun time period allotted whereas the other shippers deliver near the end of their arrival guarantee. They all lose packages from time to time regardless of cushy union job (Canada Post employees) that pumps tons of money into the local economy or overworked with no chance of retirement or benefits due to part time status (private shipping firm). I have kept a log for 2 years (excel is awesome) and when you compare Canada's national mail carrier vs the US version it is clear that you get what you pay for. So far Canada Post has lost 0 items and damaged 2 with an average daily delivery rate of 68.5 miles(not km). This is the distance a package moves in a day and packages ranged in size and weights up to a maximum of 2 feet by 3 feet and 35lbs. USPS on the other hand has lost 2 items and damaged 12 with an average daily delivery rate of only 28miles. By my rudimentary calculations Canada Post is three times more efficient and depending on what is shipped are just as cost effective as other package handlers and they are accessable to anyone. I have also heard that a lot of the private shipping firms rely on the National Mail carriers infastructure (including planes and trucks and large postal centres) to get their packages to you. So I say don't be so cheap as to complain about the 2 dollar difference. Support your neighbors and help keep money here in Canada.

They are always late when delivering my packages on an express service. I always file a claim and get my full money back. Why should I pay a ridiculously high cost for some disgruntled employee to slack off and not follow through on a gauranteed service. Here's the link to file a claim against a lost/late package on a gauranteed delivery.

https://obc.canadapost.ca/orc/claimsEntry.do?type=2

who would be the most effective when a complaint needs to be made re: letter carriers? we have the most inept carrier there is, i get letters now from november, january, and my husband received a letter from revenue canada in january dated october of 2009 with a grocery list on it! i heard before it is illegal for a carrier to take mail home undelivered? and i have complained to our post office but nothing has changed, there are days we don't receive mail at all which is very unusual for our household and our parents have the same mail carrier and we went last weekend without mail for 5 days. it's ridiculous

When I lived in London, I bought 12 large moving carton boxes from Edinburgh, Scotland, I paid them 5 pounds for shipping cost and the boxes were at my door the next day. Here in Canada, i wanted to send 2 small bottles the size of 1.5cm X 4cm Canada post wanted $12 for that.

Since I did publish some books (manual on test flying) and I do travel to Europe often, I take some books with me to send to US by airmail, which is cheaper than by surface from Canada. What you want from socialist state and their union with the commie Layton, Bob Ray and Ignatief in the front? Their aim is total power and totalitarian state. When I did immigrate in late 69 from the communist dictatorship, i never believed that it would come to Canada. But it is comming. By the way letter all across North America was 6 pennies and to the rest of the world 15. Mail was delivered twice a day, icluding Saturdays. Now they even do not bother to buzz and they leave the note that you have a parcel in the post office, where you have to go for a pick up. Thanks God for Internet, Fedex, Pulolator and all the other competing companies. Keep the good work.