Canada Post, How I Love Thee

[james_davis_nicoll]

An author very kindly sent me a copy of her book back in April or May. It never arrived. She sent another copy on June 16th, priority mail so it could be tracked. It just arrived.

Now it might seem unfair that I immediately assume the problem is on the Canadian side of the border but this is because experience tells me that every time someone posted a package that got delayed or went missing, it did it on the Canadian side of the border. This is because Canada Post sucks.

Comments

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I'm still boggled that the USPS can do something better than Canada Post, but I've heard a lot of stuff from friends north of our mutual border about shipping things, so I should back off on the US Snail.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

John Callahan could hand-deliver packages faster than Canada Post does and Helen Keller had better odds of reading the address correctly.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

*giggle* I get the Keller reference, but who is John Callahan?

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

a quadriplegic cartoonist. wikipedia has more. his best known book is called _don't worry-- he won't get far on foot_.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

A proposed biographical movie, with Robin Williams in the title role, was in the planning stages in 2000 but was never produced.

I am hard pressed to think of an actor I am less interested in seeing play Callahan. Paris Hilton, maybe, and even there it's close.

[liabrown]

I liked it when Canada Post delivered us a ticking package (it was a chess clock).

[(Anonymous)]

I wouldn't be so quick to blame Canada Post. Customs and Border Protection does have a habit of helping themselves to untraceable packages which have resale value or are of personal interest to CBP's front line brownshirts. Most losses of international mail occur during customs screening, not after it.

Theft and corruption is what happens when organization is granted unlimited power to seize without due process in violation of the basic rights established in the Charter. Since CBP already operates outside the law, it's no stretch for CBP employees to decide themselves to operate outside the law on a personal level.

[laetitia-apis.livejournal.com]

Neither value nor personal interest can explain why it was impossible to maintain a round robin with a Canadian member in it. Who would steal partly-written amateur manuscripts? I suspect that customs trashes letters when the pile gets too high.

--
Joy Beeson

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

Theft and corruption is what happens when organization is granted unlimited power to seize without due process in violation of the basic rights established in the Charter...

... and then you pay its employees cr@p wages.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

I have a good one.

I ordered the entire Phil Foglio Xxxenophile collection online years ago, from the only retailer I could find that carried it, a comic shop based in the US. The package dutifully arrived, only for me to find that some of the issues had been confiscated by Customs. They'd left a polite note informing me they were protecting the country from such scandalous material.

The best part? When you opened the cover to see the publisher's information, they'd been produced by a printing company in Ontario.

Yes, Canada Customs was protecting the nation from scourges such as myself importing a publication that had been printed in Canada.

[jkahane.livejournal.com]

You got this right, James. One of the reasons I call them Canada Post Awful.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

Canada Post-Apocalyptic?

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

It's a Post-postal service, which has evolved beyond the need to actually ensure that post arrives anywhere anymore.

Vinge warned us.

[mishalak.livejournal.com]

So do you think I should add replacing the Canada Post with the USPS would be a good addition to my list of things to tempt Canadians with when suggesting the US and Canada merge? (Yes, distant pipe dream. But so was the EU in 1950whatever.)

Time for another exciting episode of ...

[tsm-in-toronto.livejournal.com]

... I can top that™:

I once mailed a birthday gift to my brother-in-law, who at the time was living not too far away, in the same province. The gift was three books.

I mailed them courtesy Canada Post, after wrapping them in several layers of old newspaper which I enclosed in an outer, brown-paper-wrapped parcel, which I then wound round-and-round with transparent packing tape, to reduce all risk of damage to the contents.

And, hey, three books arrived at his house in that very same package. But they weren't the same books.

My brother-in-law is an atheist who does stuff in theater. The three books I sent him were about acting and stage-lighting.

The books he received, were Evangelical Christian "inspirational" literature.

Our best explanation, after he delicately asked me to explain the very bad joke (and then I learned what had happened), was that someone in one of the vast CP warehouses had tried to steal from (or, perhaps, accidentally smashed open) two parcels, and finding nothing of value had just mashed the contents back into the respective parcels, willy-nilly, switching the contents.

So, presumably someone out there has a story to tell, about shipping off some Jesus-loves-you books to a friend/relative/pen-pal, only to have three books about method acting and theatrical lighting arrive, instead.

But, credit where credit is due: at least the books arrived in time for his birthday.

Re: Time for another exciting episode of ...

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

The birthday before last, my sister-in-law gave me a Christian pamphlet with underlining in "important" places. It made a nice addition to my mixed-paper recycling bin.

nice work if you can get it

[oh6.livejournal.com]

I am reliably informed (my source or sources insists or insist on remaining anonymous) that people in Canada frequently order stuff from companies that only ship to Canada at a preposterous premium, and have it shipped to friends or family in the United States, who then ship it to Canada, not at a preposterous premium.

Re: nice work if you can get it

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Adorama Cameras, for example. They only ship using UPS Global, which means you pay $150 shipping on a $60 camera bag. Shipping via USPS to the US for the same bag, $12.

Tell me again how private enterprise is cheaper and more efficient than the public service…

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, my only Canada Post problems have all involved international mail. In the cases where I shipped the parcel, I received prompt recompense for the stated value. In the case (singular) where the parcel was (supposedly) shipped to me*, Canada Post was very helpful in checking every possible mangling of my address, following through with Canada Customs, and so on—the more so as I was the recipient not the sender, and had very little information to give them about when/where the parcel had been mailed**.


* The parcel eventually arrived, several months later, with sun fading indicating it had been stored somewhere for a while, and with a postmark only a few days old (ie. it had not been processed the USPS until several months after it was supposedly shipped).

** According to the company I was dealing with, in America (or at least in Texas), it is up to the recipient to trace missing mail.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

My experiences with Canada Post have shown that anything not shipped as a trackable item that has value will be stolen. In comparison I have never lost a parcel shipped by Greyhound.

I assume it is because non-trackable items are obvious to all CP employees who handle them. Eventually the item will pass enough pairs of eyes/hands that one set will belong to a thief who knows there will be no consequences.

canada post unsecured delivery,,,

[(Anonymous)]

most of canada post delivery problems (parcels found outside in a snow bank,parcels left outside your door unsecured,no delivery notice card in your mail box ) i have descovered are being caused by the the delivery service canada post contracts out to and they in turn hire lazy sleeze balls who could care less about their responsables or the customers, i live in a 50 unit building and the delivery contractor has left 8 unsecured parcels outside my door in the last 2 weeks and it is just a miracle nothing was stolen,