# Canada Post - anyone else have them hold parcels for weeks blaming it on customs?



## YJMUJRSRV (Jul 17, 2007)

gone fishing


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

yes, actually. i have been having trouble with this for years. here are some examples:

on sept 6th 2006 i mailed myself a box of extension cords, and another box of photos, papers and a few notebooks from niagra falls, NY. they arrived in _november_.

first week of feb, my sister mailed me a box of candy for my birthday. from delaware. they arrived half-way through march.

when i lived in the states i was always sending cards and gifts up here to my (then) fiance' and her kids. they always sat on the package and blamed customs every time.


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## bobb (Jan 4, 2007)

When my son was about 1, some friends in Europe sent a package of stuff for him. All that ever arrived was the mailing label. Yup, the label came off the box, so good old Canada Post delivered the label which was clearly stamped "Cleared Canada Customs Vancouver". Their customs office is in the main post office which means they lost the box going from one side of the building to the other. When I first inquired, they refused to believe that I could know where they lost it and then told me it was probably shipped back to their dead letter station in Montreal. This was all on the same day that the "label" arrived at my home. The overall feeling was that I was wasting their time by complaining about it. The package was never found.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

Canada Post is a nightmare. the unionized employees have been in a state of conflict with the management for about 30 years. 
the don't give a crap about you as a client. and they have set up a nice system so that if a customer does lodge a complaint, they are guaranteed a royal runaround that goes nowhere and will resolve nothing. 
here's a true story.... i had bought some tickets to a concert in Atlantic City New Jersey (thru Ticketbastard) and i wanted to send them as a gift to a friend in New York.
I asked the Canada Post agent what was the best most secure method to mail these tickets. Registered Mail was the reply.
I sent the envelope Registered Mail which means that someone is supposed to log and track the envelope every time it changes hands or moves through a Postal Station until it is delivered and the recipient signs for it. 
Well the envelope was stolen and disappeared out of the mail tracking system. How is this possible? Well it isn't of course. at least not without someone knowing about it. But it happened.
Canada Post then required various claim forms and documents be sent to process the "insurance" against the lost mail.
This process took Canada Post over 3 months to complete and then they refused to reimburse the cost of the Registered Mail (since all Postage is non-refundable according to them, even if they lose, steal or mis-direct your mail). Canada Post did however pay out the maximum insurance allowable of $60 (which did not cover the cost of the stolen tickets).


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## YJMUJRSRV (Jul 17, 2007)

gone fishing


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## vasthorizon (Aug 10, 2008)

I'm having a guitar shipped to me from the states which cost me $300 CAD. 
I did some calculation and I will end up eating more than $100 in duties, taxes, brokerage, etc. 
if I ship through either FedEx or UPS so I WAS considering USPS - Canada Post to lessen the fees.

After hearing this, I'm thinking of avoiding USPS - Canada Post and just going with UPS. Should I just suck it up and go with UPS?


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## xuthal (May 15, 2007)

I have ordered guitars and smaller things through USPS and never paid any fees.It may take a little while but it saves you some cash.If you need it for a gig fast go with fedex/ups,you will pay the fees but it might get there quicker,the last time i ordered something through fedex my guitar was lost in the mail for four months.YMMV


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

vasthorizon said:


> After hearing this, I'm thinking of avoiding USPS - Canada Post and just going with UPS. Should I just suck it up and go with UPS?


you're kidding, right? if not, use the search box and spend untold hours reading the horror stories related by those of us who have already made the same mistake you are currently contemplating. *never EVER use ups if there is any other viable alternative*.


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## vasthorizon (Aug 10, 2008)

So, which one should I go for? Not UPS, not FedEx (same deal as UPS), not USPS... What other options do I have? 

EDIT: And I have imported a guitar before via UPS and have been slapped with more than $200 in fees. Ugh. That reminds me. Never again.


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## Sneaky (Feb 14, 2006)

I have noticed much longer USPS shipping times these days myself. Even CD orders are taking up to 2 weeks. WTF?

On the other hand I got a neck off Ebay last week and it was delivered to my door by Canada Post on *Sunday* of all days.

Even though CCR does not normally "see" the packages, they still need to process the paperwork before Canada Post can deliver them, so I'm not buying their story. Methinks it's a case of finger pointing going on here, and both might be to blame.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

okay here is some true life recent experience for your consideration. i bought some Wolfetone Legend pickups from a fellow guitar enthusiast in the USA and he shipped them here by USPS/Canada Post. they got to my door in 5 days and no additional fees whatsoever. so that is a positive.
in December i bought a Collings CL Deluxe guitar from a fellow in St. Louis and had it shipped to me by FedEX. the guitar arrived in 48 hours and the only additional fees i paid were the Canadian GST and PST. guitar was in perfect condition btw. ( i have also had good experiences with UPS...sometimes)
that said, i have also had bad experiences with Canada Post, UPS and FedEX. it is the luck of the draw.


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## vasthorizon (Aug 10, 2008)

I never had to pay for anything that was sent through Canada Post.
I've bought pickups, a small amp, pots, caps, etc. and all have arrived in my mailbox albeit late.
In fact, I have a set of pickups now en route via USPS - Canada Post.
I've never had a bad experience with them. It's just that these horror stories make me nervous about the guitar that I'm sending now. 
It will be the first time someone's sending me a guitar through Canada Post.


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## xuthal (May 15, 2007)

I should mention that Canada post doesn't always update their tracking information.I have received parcels the same day and the tracking number said it was a province over.One time i tracked it to customs,no other information,checked my mail and it was there,the next day got an email telling me it arrived at my post office.Sometimes the email was sent to me informing me that it had reached my post office the second or third day after i had picked it up.Sometimes it comes down to a lazy postal worker,they can skip three provinces without notice and arrive at you're door/p.o. box without warning.
There is something not quite right with Canada post but they do save on cross border fees when used with USPS,which i prefer to paying for an item not worth half of what the fees are.


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## gtrguy (Jul 6, 2006)

At work we send and recieve about 50-75 packages to and from the US each month. Canada Post/USPS is the carrier of choice and they've never lost or damaged anything. Occasionally they will get delayed for whatever reason and take 3 weeks instead of the usual 10 days or so. I wouldn't use anything else.


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

I think that you have to figure out where it crosses the border and where it's going to in Canada. Anything that I have gotten from the New England or the east coast seems to arrive quickly and without hassle. I have had stuff from California enter into Canada via Washington and only had a week delay once, but you figure that there must be a huge amount of stuff at the docks. Anything that comes in from Detroit or Buffallo that comes from the midwest takes for ever.


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## YJMUJRSRV (Jul 17, 2007)

gone fishing


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## shoretyus (Jan 6, 2007)

YJMUJRSRV said:


> . Lately things in and out seem to sit at the missisuaga facility. My last outgoing sat there for 10 days before boarding a plane the USA.


I had a boat rudder that arrived on doorstep in Florida ( on a Saturday no less ) that was still showing it was in customs.


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## cheezyridr (Jun 8, 2009)

usps works 6 days a week. it's normal to get mail on saturday in the states. i was surprised when i came here and saw that was not the case


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## Diablo (Dec 20, 2007)

Canada Post is usually really good, but I did have one nightmare incident a few years ago.

I had ordered ssomething from the US. A couple weeks later, I received one of those "we missed you, come pick it up" tags.
I went to the post office the next day, they said they didnt have the package, maybe the delicery person still had it. Come back tomorrow. Returned the next day, still no package...suddenyl it became a phantom...they claimed they never received it. WTF? Why did you leave a tag at my door? Didnt have a good response. As if I have nothign better to do every day then visit the post office. All they said was "we'll look for it and call you if it turns up".
Long story short, it turned up about 1 week and a half later.

In the mean time I had tried to complain about the poor and at times rude service I received, and realized what a bureaucracy it is. The person at the post office refused to give me any info as to who to escalate to..."find it yourself" she said. I learned then, that they basically operate as franchises, and could care less about customer service. All I eventually found was a webpage that gave a mailing address to send complaints to an ombudsman...no email, phone, fax, just letters. Probably effectively deters a lot of people from following up with it, while at the same time sending out a message loud and clear "WE DONT CARE WHAT YOU THINK".

I dropped the whole thing, as I was in the process of moving to another neighborhood serviced by a different post office and have had no issues since. I wont name names, but the NEW neighborhood is NOT Oakville Neyagawa/Dundas Shoppers Drug Mart.


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## prsrick (May 15, 2009)

very bad with Canada Post, I ordered Shure SE530 which cost me $400 from the state, I followed the Tracking and saw it passed Custom and then into the Missisauga Processing Plant and then disappear. Looks like someone liked the item!


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

This is a good and bad Post story my teacher told us years ago. 

A young man had fallen in love with a young woman his own age in another town. Wanting to marry her he sent her a letter, telling her of his feelings for her and asking for her hand in marriage. He said in the letter, that if he did not hear from her, he would understand that her answer was no. He took the letter to the post office and put it in the mail slot that was in the door of the small local post office. The letter did not go in the box but slipped between the box and the inside of the door where it sat for 40? years. Neither married all their lives. When the building underwent renovations, the box was removed and the letter was still there after all those years and it was mailed. The young lady, now in her 60's, still lived in the same town and the same home. When she received the letter, she got in touch with her boyfriend of many years ago and, yes, they finally got married.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

ewwww. wrinkly old people sex...get that image out of my brain!


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## newuser73 (Aug 6, 2010)

Hi, I'm not a musician and i'm not interested in guitars but i came across this website because i googled canada post and customs and here it comes up, your experiences....i have a registered mail item officially stuck at customs for more than a week and i need to leave in 9 days, I hope i will be able to pick it up otherwise they told me it will be returned to sender. it's so frustrating.....i called canada post this morning and again they said its in customs, etc, etc. the package passed through the mississauga mail centre. anyone has experiences of transit there for more than 2 weeks? TKS!


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## crashaholic (Mar 3, 2010)

Yep. Always from the US to here.
I have bike gear sent to me often from the UK and it is much faster than ordering things from the US. 

Now if it is from the USA, unless it is letter/small parcel size, I have everything shipped to a freight forwarder in the states (I'm in Vancouver so the US border is 30 minute drive or so) as most companies offer decent rates (if not free) shipping inside the USA.
I'll gladly pay the $4~$6 handling fee, declare it at the border (sometimes they stop me for taxes/duty, sometimes they don't: depends on what I'm bringing back) and no hassle other than an hour of my time.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

Ok guys...I WISH that I would have seen this thread ages ago...anyway, here we go:

I work for Canada Post. I can shed a lot of light on many of the issues that have been discussed here but there's no way I can definitively answer them all but I will try to touch upon some of the main points that have been brought up in this thread. 

I currently work as a letter-carrier (called an 'outside' job) in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and prior to that I had worked in the mail processing plant (called an 'inside' job) in Halifax for 3 years. Before working in the Halifax plant I had also worked in Calgary's main mail processing plant (inside) for about 2 and a half years and about a year in various depots in Calgary working inside doing sortation along with about a year prior to that as a 'casual' letter carrier in Calgary.

First of all, I do not believe that Canada Post employees do the Customs work. From all of thew discussions and questions that I asked during my time 'inside' I have never heard of Canada Post employees doing the Customs work. However, IF they do then they don't just get to work and 'do their jobs'. The lack of cooperation between the unionized workers and the supervisors<---who are another union (I bet that you didn't know that!) is the way it is specifically because Canada Post as a corporation wants it to be that way. They are an old dinosaur from long ago and they know that they can keep their sheltered high salary jobs as long as they keep the dinosaur chugging along but they don't want to deal with the difficult stuff so they have specifically placed a layer of bureaucracy between the work force and them - that being a unionized group of supervisors who are really just glorified administrators and duty assigners without the power to do anything much more than act as liaison between the workforce and the corporation. 

Anyway, back to the part about 'the workers doing their jobs'. If the supervisor (or his boss) decides that some other mail is more important than the 'customs' packages then they will just sit in metal cages until which time as the supervisor (or his boss) decides that they will be processed. The workforce has been downsized to the point that most people who used to specialize in certain aspects of the operation are just shuffled around to move mail that is deemed to be worked at any given time, leaving other positions (or mail) unstaffed. So, it is not a case of "waiting for donut eater #12 to process it. Unless they forget too which I was told by a mailman they do all the time. The pile sits there until someone realizes "hey I've been looking at the wall of same boxes in sector G for weeks, has it been processed" ... donut eater #15 "I dunno, guess so", and so it goes another week or two." It is a case of a supervisor saying (in his head) "we are performance evaluated on the processing of this mail so..." (then out loud) "let's have you, you and you handle this...you, you and you handle this and the rest of you go do that" If the 'wall of boxes in sector G' sit for any amount of time it is either because the supervisor doesn't think he can get it done as well as getting the stuff that he wants to get done or because he doesn't know...the third option being that he doesn't care. 

People tell me that 'in days gone by' they just knew their jobs and came to work and got to it. Now, nobody starts work because the supervisors hold everyone at the beginning of the shift and assign people to work. So, as I said...I do not believe that Canada Post employees do the Customs work but if they do then that is exactly how it is handled. I know a lady who used to work for Customs in Canada Post's facility and while she worked for them, she was not a Canada Post employee. I believe, at this time there is a Customs facility in Montreal and one in Vancouver. 

The image of 'doughnut eaters'although funny, is definitely inaccurate and the image of the workers not caring about the customer is also inaccurate although, like any workplace there are exceptions - and let me tell you that the workers would love to see the 'pylons' put on a catapult and lobbed into the middle of a busy multi-lane highway. Oh, I'm not saying that there aren't some full-on characters from The Far Side in the facilities...THERE ARE! But the majority do not fit the stereotype.

Another issue that I saw was Canada Post not refunding postage for late mail. They cannot refund postage for mail coming from the USA because they are not collecting the postage from that mail. They are paid 'by the piece' for US mail and if anyone thinks that is a lucrative endeavor well, I have an old image in my head about free trade with an eagle behind a beaver...anyway...they definitely refund postage for 'expedited', 'express', and 'priority' mail. All of those products have specific commitments which if not met (AND are addressed correctly!!) then all you have to do is open an inquiry/trace on that parcel/piece of mail and you (the sender) will be refunded. 

I am going to post this now and see if there are any other things that I can offer some information on as the above are the initial ones that stood out to me.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

xuthal said:


> I should mention that Canada post doesn't always update their tracking information.I have received parcels the same day and the tracking number said it was a province over.One time i tracked it to customs,no other information,checked my mail and it was there,the next day got an email telling me it arrived at my post office.Sometimes the email was sent to me informing me that it had reached my post office the second or third day after i had picked it up.Sometimes it comes down to a lazy postal worker,they can skip three provinces without notice and arrive at you're door/p.o. box without warning.
> There is something not quite right with Canada post but they do save on cross border fees when used with USPS,which i prefer to paying for an item not worth half of what the fees are.


This is one that I can't figure out because if you do not scan the barcode on an item that is being delivered then the supervisor is at your station the next day. If it is a 'signature required' item then you will have a photocopy of the required paperwork waiting for you. So...a couple of provinces over doesn't always mean much because if I send a guitar from Halifax to Vancouver expedited, it gets scanned in Halifax, goes on a truck which passes through the rest of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick possibly part of Ontario before arriving in Montreal and getting scanned in Montreal (hence showing up in Montreal a couple of provinces over). If you are really a stickler for checking the tracking, you should see 'out for delivery' show up on the tracking info the morning (between 7am and 10 am) of the delivery. If there is an absence on your route then it may be later but that is the typical window. 

The incidence of it already being delivered and not showing up as delivered until a couple of days later is impossible in my mind, knowing the process BUT I am not doubting you. The employees make suggestions all of the time to make the processes better and management ignores them.


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

YJMUJRSRV said:


> Canadapost seems to have a hard time processing incoming parcels. I've had one sitting in "customs" for a week. They like to use this excuse but customs doesnt see any parcel unless they want to. Canadapost has their own bonded warehouse. The parcels come in and the info is electronically submitted to customs. Customs does not even calculate taxes, Canadapost's entry clerk will type in the amount, code and the tax will be applied.
> 
> So anyway, I've been digging and it appears they do this alot and blame it on customs. I checked with Customs. They confirmed that they do not hold or see any of these items. Unless there is a reason or they decide to do random checks, no customs officer will lay hands or eyes on the thing. Canadapost clicks buttons, customs clears it in minutes with the OK to deliver. So when an item is "under review by customs" its actually sitting in Canadapost's warehouse waiting for donut eater #12 to process it. Unless they forget too which I was told by a mailman they do all the time. The pile sits there until someone realizes "hey I've been looking at the wall of same boxes in sector G for weeks, has it been processed" ... donut eater #15 "I dunno, guess so", and so it goes another week or two.



*UPDATE:*

I did some checking today and asked specifically if Canada Post's people actually do the Customs work as you have suggested and it turns out that I was correct in that Canada Post employees DO NOT do the Customs work as you have described.

Canada Post DOES NOT clear parcels through Customs. Customs employees process the parcels in Canada Post facilities but Canada Post employees do not do the work. In fact your entire scenario that you have laid out is false. If that's what a Customs employee told you then THEY must be the ones trying to deflect blame. Canada Post employees do not see any of the items until Customs has processed them. That processing includes allowing any mail into the country, charging applicable fees, and/or opening any mail.

To clear things up, I have highlighted the items in blue in your statement that are false. 

So...there you go. Even the union doesn't want the enormous responsibility of deciding what comes in and what goes out. That's up to Customs and they have the liability/responsibility so, if it is delayed in Customs, it is delayed in Customs.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

smorgdonkey said:


> Ok guys...I WISH that I would have seen this thread ages ago...anyway, here we go:
> 
> I work for Canada Post. I can shed a lot of light on many of the issues that have been discussed here but there's no way I can definitively answer them all but I will try to touch upon some of the main points that have been brought up in this thread.
> 
> ...


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## smorgdonkey (Jun 23, 2008)

six-string said:


> now we know who to blame.



OWWW!!

There it is!!


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