Canada Postal Strike

The strike is ongoing, and there’s not a lot of information in the news. I’m checking every day and can let you know when anything changes. My husband works for Customs and has friends at Postal, so he hears things sometimes. With previous strikes, Canada Post has been legislated back to work, but because we have a minority government right now, it looks like that’s not possible (the official opposition has said they won’t support back-to-work legislation). So it may be a while. I’m waiting on my PYO Swap piece, a package from the factory, a package from another collector, and I have 2 other people holding pieces I’ve bought from them until the strike is over. The backlog will be massive. I also live in a very small town and do most of my Christmas shopping online. 😭 Nothing is moving at all except for benefit cheques (it’s a full strike as opposed to a rolling strike). 😱 Sorry it’s not better news.

Will mailing something by UPS or FedEx still arrive to people in Canada? Just wondering if that works or not.

Brenda Lower wrote:

Will mailing something by UPS or FedEx still arrive to people in Canada? Just wondering if that works or not.

Yes, it should work.

You can use UPS or FedEx to Canada. From the U.S. end, it looks as though they cost about the same, with Postal sometimes being a bit more. From the Canadian end, the brokerage fees these companies charge are so high that it is prohibitively expensive for us to want to use UPS, FedEx, or DHL. All of the Canadian collectors I know avoid these shipping options like the plague.

When you ship via USPS, Canada Post will clear your package through Customs for a flat rate of $9.95, no matter the value of the contents. When you ship using any of these other companies, they charge an exponentially higher “Customs Clearance Fee” that is proportionate to the value of the package, and maybe also based on the type of goods being imported.

Whenever anyone ships to me from the U.S. using UPS, I am asked to pay somewhere from $30 -$ 150+ on top of the price of the item ($10-$15 brokerage fees are a thing of the past; I was recently asked to pay $183 in UPS fees for a larger sculpt – large, but smaller than an SK), plus the already expensive shipping cost, and then the duty/tax as well. Another Canadian collector recently told me that she once paid $97 CAD to UPS for an item valued at $100 CAD. This is why we do not like UPS.

99% of Canadians don’t know that you can self-clear your own package if it was shipped by any of those couriers, and thereby avoid the Clearance fees altogether. I know this because my husband works for Customs and was stationed at the largest postal facility in the country for over a decade. Self-clearing is possible, but it involves a lot of red tape and a trip *in person* to a Custons office. At this time, there is no option to self-clear online, although that is rumoured to be coming. Canada is a big country, and
most of our citizens do not live near a Customs office. While all of this is happening, the courier is withholding your item and pestering you incessantly to pay their fees, which can cause a significant delay in actually receiving the item. It is really, really upsetting, especially if the item in limbo is a bigger-ticket and/or OOAK, irreplaceable item like a GB or a TP.

So PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t ship to us via UPS, FedEx or DHL without checking what our preference is first, although I realize that it’s a pain in the butt to have to do so. For me personally, I am asking Windstone people if I can pay them just for the item upfront, then have them hold onto my purchases until after the strike is over, at which point I will pay for the shipping via Canada Post. You gotta be a dedicated collector to go through all of that!