eBay

sin-n-dex · ‎11-25-2018

So as some of you might know, there's a rotating strike going on at Canada Post. Basically every day a new area/city strikes for a day, but it might affect mail in that area for a few days (at my work we have gotten no mail, then we get tons of mail).

So I ordered a dress. They usually ship it Purolator, but for some reason they used Canada Post in the middle of a labour dispute. In any event, it's one day service from Newmarket to where I live (maybe two days if they use the expedited service from Canada Post, but normally I get things next day).

Canada Post picked up my item on Nov 21. This is what I see when I track it. Every day they push out the delivery date another few days so I'm supposed to get this dress on Nov 28 now.

It's a good thing it's an end of season summer dress that I won't likely wear any time soon... perhaps by the time Canada sees nicer weather the strike will be over and they can deliver my dress.

Cheers, C.

labs118 · ‎11-25-2018

Hi Sin
What a mess .
All my friends up there may never get their Christmas cards this year
Most years I mail 1st week of Dec. they may get them on time or not !!!
This year I planned to send them this week .
Should be interesting to see when they arrive.
Glad you don't need that dress right away.
Can't even imagine how ebay is handling this with Delivery times & sellers dashboards.

siamdao · ‎11-26-2018

Many sellers and buyers are affected. Buyers should also note that Canada Post does not track registered international small packets when in transit in Canada. We have already had to refund two sales because of the labor issue and customers not knowing where their item is. We have excluded Canada from any and all future sales--it's just not worth the hassle and loss of revenvue and we did have several very good repeat customers whom this affects. International shipping to Canada is not efficient at the best of times and this labour issue has nailed the coffin shut for us. I am thinking many sellers will reconsider shipping to Canada in the future. CUPW and Canada Post's inability to find a solution has cost us several hundred usd and we do have some packets in transit (sitting in a warehouse or in Japan) that we will likely be forced to refund.

sin-n-dex · ‎11-26-2018

@labs118 wrote:
Hi Sin
What a mess .
All my friends up there may never get their Christmas cards this year
Most years I mail 1st week of Dec. they may get them on time or not !!!
This year I planned to send them this week .
Should be interesting to see when they arrive.
Glad you don't need that dress right away.
Can't even imagine how ebay is handling this with Delivery times & sellers dashboards.

I'm not going to comment on whether or not I think the strike is justified or not...

But I will say they did this in 2016 (around July) and the threat of a strike caused me to ship everything from Niagara NY and use a courier to bring items to the US. That worked very well for me, especially when I couldn't walk for several months and FedEx was picking up the box of eBay items from my back porch. Canada Post is missing out on $6000 a year in revenue from the shipping I used to do with them. Some of my B&M friends who do online shipping are also getting involved in the USA origin shipping, since a coin is $7 to ship back to Canada by USPS (it's supposed to be tracked, so far I haven't had a problem), but we pay around $14 or more to ship it within Canada.

Cheers, C.

sin-n-dex · ‎11-26-2018

@siamdao wrote:
Many sellers and buyers are affected. Buyers should also note that Canada Post does not track registered international small packets when in transit in Canada. We have already had to refund two sales because of the labor issue and customers not knowing where their item is. We have excluded Canada from any and all future sales--it's just not worth the hassle and loss of revenvue and we did have several very good repeat customers whom this affects. International shipping to Canada is not efficient at the best of times and this labour issue has nailed the coffin shut for us. I am thinking many sellers will reconsider shipping to Canada in the future. CUPW and Canada Post's inability to find a solution has cost us several hundred usd and we do have some packets in transit (sitting in a warehouse or in Japan) that we will likely be forced to refund.

I think it depends on the service. AFAIK, the Registered Mail isn't tracked, but the USPS First Class is (that's the service I use). Most countries don't track registered mail in the destination country if it's international.

Cheers, C.

labs118 · ‎11-26-2018

I knew you shipped from state side alot & I understand why.
The costs are crazy on the postage up there.
Well pretty much everything is crazy with the prices up there.
When we open our little cottage & start having to go to the beer store OUCH !!!
I'm used to our prices , it kind of hurts to buy food, drinks, and pretty much everything up there.

Hope your dress finds it's way to you soon .

sin-n-dex · ‎11-26-2018

@labs118 wrote:
I knew you shipped from state side alot & I understand why.
The costs are crazy on the postage up there.
Well pretty much everything is crazy with the prices up there.
When we open our little cottage & start having to go to the beer store OUCH !!!
I'm used to our prices , it kind of hurts to buy food, drinks, and pretty much everything up there.

Hope your dress finds it's way to you soon .

Prices are crazy up here... I live in Southern Ontario (two hours south of Toronto), and I'm trying to buy a house... there are THIRTY houses for sale that are under $400,000. And there aren't many houses for sale to begin with... This is in a city of half a million people. The banks here are willing to give me a mortgage of $1800 a month to buy a house, but of reliable income it leaves not much to survive on, and puts me in a situation of being completely shafted if my company does lay offs.

For the record... a two bedroom apartment in a bad neighbourhood is $1300, in a better neighbourhood is $1600, and renting a house is over $2000 a month. So I think I'm better to try and buy something instead.

The way housing is, I can only afford to buy a condo... and I'll need to get lucky. Few houses are for sale longer than 7 days, and many good properties sell the same day or next day they are listed for more than the listing price. I put an offer on one at 4pm and by the time the agent got my offer it had sold to someone else (but it was for sale when I did the offer).

Cheers, C.