Canada Post is a disgrace.
As a nation, Canada depends on Canada Post to convey much of its goods to and from all over the world. Yes, there are competitors but CP still retains an effective monopoly, certainly for internal mail and parcels. Even a major competitor, Purolator, is 93% owned by CP. If CP does a poor job, we as a nation are harmed.
CP does a poor job; in my view it does a terrible job. Here are a few reasons why from my own observations.
- Sending parcels is ridiculously complicated. They want details of where from including postal codes, where to including postal codes even abroad, length, width, height and weight. They then present a host of different levels of service and prices, some of which are priced but then marked as not available. Compare that to Britain’s Royal Mail as an example. All they need entered is country from, country to, weight, then select from letter, small parcel or parcel. That’s it. If they can do it, why not Canada Post?
-Sending parcels is ridiculously expensive. I just sent two identical envelopes as small parcels, one to Scotland, one to Ontario. The cheapest rate to Scotland was about $2 cheaper than the cheapest rate to Ontario from Nova Scotia. Go figure! If the international envelope I sent to Scotland had been mailed from Scotland to here, Royal Mail charges less than half the cost of what I had to pay.
- I often buy small items mailed from China. The cost of the item and the postage from China, both together, is usually between $1 and $2. If I were to mail anything back to China in the same package, the postage alone would be well in excess of $10.
- CP makes it difficult to contact them. They provide no email addresses on their site, not even a web form. If you want to write to them you are forced to buy a stamp for snail mail. What century are they working in? To send them anything in writing via their web site, you have to register, then fill out a form providing the postage reference number of what it is you are complaining about. Clearly they presume all contacts are complaints. I wanted to write to them just to provide feedback and to compliment a local staff member. Impossible. Don’t believe me, try it!
There are many more such examples and I would be happy to hear from others what they think of Canada Post. In my view, if they were trying to alienate their customers they are doing a superb job.