Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Howaboutthat » Fri Apr 16, 2010 8:11 pm

jon wrote:Unless things have changed since this original set of agreements that got Amazon into Canada without running afoul of the federal government's "bookstores must be owned by Canadians" rule, delivery and order fulfillment went hand in hand, and were exclusively provided by Canada Post. I just cannot believe that Canada Post asked UPS to help them out in the Easter Rush.


Well Jon, you've haven't yet come up with any evidence that the deal with Canada Post ever changed, as you asserted earlier in this thread. In fact, I think you're now arguing with yourself.
So, I believe we have now entered the 'does it matter and do we care' part of the thread.
Thank you, and good night! :bigsmurf:
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby jon » Fri Apr 16, 2010 9:27 pm

Howaboutthat wrote:you've haven't yet come up with any evidence that the deal with Canada Post ever changed

Oh, how silly of me, to not have considered the possibility that UPS would be delivering for Canada Post.

I have a bridge that I own in Brooklyn if you are interested in buying it.
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Glen Livingstone » Mon Apr 19, 2010 1:52 am

...

Ermmm ...

Amazon has several distribution centers in the US.

Some are in the center of the country ... not all come from the coast.

They use UPS for many, if not most, of their deliveries which go 'in bulk' ... This may well include items that are 'lumped together' to go to their drop point near the Canadian border, where they are cleared through customs, then picked up for subsequent door-to-door delivery to individual customers via Canada Post on the 'other' side.

The carriers would not be 'co-operating' in such a case, nor 'delivering' for each other ... one takes it as far as their contract goes ... the other picks it up from there and is contracted for the rest of the trip ... This is not uncommon with any commercial carriers ... particularly if they are doing a 'full load' trip, rather than piecemeal ... ie: the pieces don't get separated until after the Canadian border is crossed ... up 'til then it may well be bulk freight.

It is also possible that some of the order was backordered ... and would come from a different area ... and/or that some of it may have been ordered / supplied by an Amazon affiliate who ships only UPS ... The only way to tell, would be to check the guy's uniform when he arrives ... If he's in a big brown truck and the chap whistles merrily up your walk in particularly stupid-looking shorts, even in the snow ... then that is likely what happened. ( If he's in a cheery red truck, slightly more surly, and bundled up against the elements ... then its been UPS'd to the border only, and you've got Canada Post on your porch, my friend . )

Whilst I certainly don't know for certain, I shouldn't think it likely that the boys on the River would mess about with the CanPost contract at the very same time they're trying to get appro from the Can Feds to, basically, completely set aside an earlier 'ruling' vis-a-vis the CanCon Culture thing. Why would they antoginize 'em ... especially then ? Mr. Bezos is ruthless once he hold the cards in his hand ... but he didn't get where he is by being stupid.

As to the UPS ' service ' ... it is appalling in many parts of America, as well as in Canada, ever since their 'ruling' back about, oh, 20 years ago, about parcels being 'left'.

In a time gone by ... they had to actually deliver the package, where it was addressed ... In the case of 'signature required' mail, it had to also be delivered to whom it was addressed ... and ... in the case of Insured packages, you could collect on said insurance if it wasn't delivered whence and where and to whom it was addressed.

This was all a reasonable requirement on the part of the shippers ... while the customers, as long as things are going smoothly, didn't notice, nor particularly care, about the 'back story' ... so long as they got their packages. And ... for the most part ... they did. It was a relatively smooth system, and things ran, well, relatively smoothly.

Then ... over the dark horizon ... came galloping what I call the ' hit and run ' days ...

Suddenly, at the stroke of a pen ... their own internal rules changed.

All of a sudden ... then ... ( and now ) ... UPS could deliver any old how. They could toss it on your porch. They could stash it behind a shrub. They could drop it off in the rocking chair or in the milk box or set it on the back of the car in your driveway ... They could leave it sticking out of your mailbox way out in the driveway. These were all ' allowed ' forms of ' delivery' and the drivers were not only allowed, but encouraged to drop things willy-nilly, and 'sign off' on them as 'delivered' ... especially in less-urban areas ... Saved on return trips, you see ... ( The fact that some of these ' less-urban' areas were large built-up suburbs just a stone's throw from places such as , oh, Washington DC , didn't seem to matter. Speed was the name of the game .. The more deliveries you could 'complete' in a day, the better. If you couldn't keep up with the quota , if there were too many people inconveniently not at home in the middle of the day, then your own job could be in jeopardy. )

Now ... For the run-of-the-mill stuff that could survive getting wet, or that was too heavy to steal ... well ... mayyyy-beee ... that was , sort-of, ok ... For things which were cheap, and/or easily replaced , ie: mass-manufactured, such as auto parts and such, that may have been acceptable ... But ... for books, subject to spoilage in damp puddles ... and for records, ditto ... and for fragile collectibles ... and rare and valuable items of all sorts ... including irreplaceable photographs and posters and papers ... it was truly dreadful.

So... shippers, having gotten panicked calls across America from their customers who arrived home to find their Beatles Butcher cover albums laying on the driveway in front of the garage for anyone to run over ... started to get smart ... or so they thought ...

They began to ship with Signature Required ... and Insured ... ( henceforth, many had NOT used insurance for valuables or irreplaceables, much like those who ship diamonds and gold coins and jewellry don't use it ... so as not to draw attention to the value on something which may well be scarce and/or difficult to replace ... it wasn't so much that they wanted an insurance claim settled, they would really rather just have had the thing delivered, because they often can't replicate that exact item for any amount of money... Sometimes in the case of originals of documents and photographs, one can't put an 'acceptable' monetary value on them, anyway ... at least not acceptable to the carrier. )

Ah, but now though ... off these things went, Insured, and with Signature Required.

Except ... and here's the huge joke ... guess who's signature they'd get ?

Well ... pretty much anyone's ...

A neighbor would do ... Someone across the street mowing their lawn ... Someone ... believe it or not ... in a neighboring apartment, in the heart of New York City ... and so on ... any old sig would do ... Got a pulse ? ... Sign here , please ... Can you pass a urine test ? ... It's all yours ... and would you deliver this to the guy across the street or next door, the guy who actually ordered it , when he gets home ?

And then ... shippers of these rare and valuable ... sometimes irrecplaceable ... commodoties started getting even more panicked calls from their customers ... Where is my Beatles Butcher cover album ??? ... It never arrived ... It isn't even laying out in the driveway and I've checked Rover's doghouse and it isn't hanging in the neighbor's Hydrangea tree ... Now what ?

No worries ... ( initially ) ... said shipper ... Why, we've got Signature Delivery on that rascal ... They can't leave it without you signing for it.

Except ... they could ... and they did.

So then ... said shipper would put in the insurance claim ... only to find out ... in many many instances ... that the UPS carrier had indeed gotten a signature .... Except that , a lot of the time, no-one knew who the hell it was from. Oh, they had a name, alright ... you have to print your name ... but who was this mystery person ? He didn't live in the house or apartment to which the thing was addressed ... And it is a wonder ... or maybe it isn't ... how many people have neighbors, or people living at neighbors' places ... that they've never even met ... even in a big apartment building in the heart of Brooklyn ... Fancy that ! ( And did you even dream that maybe, just maybe, some one or two of those folk that are given a package which is not theirs, aren't completely, well, honest ? Who'd a thunk it ! ... Obviously UPS didn't. )

Instead, UPS set forth their official policy that ... A/ they had gotten a signature , so it was not lost , it was delivered to someone ... and B/ if they had delivered it someone else, other than the addressee, even at another address than the addressee ... then, too bad ... their part was over ... it was the responsibility of the person who got the package to redeliver it to the rightful owner ... and/or the responsibility of the addressee to troll around the 'hood trying to find out who had it ... and ... in cases where the UPS driver could definitely say " It was the big guy in the apartment right across the hall from you " ... then, it was the responsibility of the addressee to get it back from the big guy in the apartment right across the hall ... no matter if the guy was a crook or drug dealer or had a pitbull or an Uzzi, or all of the above ... or just plain lied and said he never got it, even while the rightful owner could see him wearing it and/or hear him playing it ... or ... worse yet ... see it listed for sale on Ebay ! ... His valuable beloved item, that came so close, but was still so far. Well, its enough to make a preacher swear.

Meantime, back at the ranch ... Shipper is furious, too ... as Customer is irate ... and ... perhaps his customer is even more irate ... and it begs the question ... Who owes who ... for something which clearly the guy who ordered it never got ? And clearly the shipper did send ?

Why UPS owed, of course, thought shipper ... Except ...

Insurance claims were promptly filled out.

And promptly rejected.

( Refer back to point A and B above ... if it was, on their system, officially 'delivered' , then there couldn't be any claim ... and if there was no claim ... then there was no appeal or even review of a claim, said claim being non-existent in the first place ... In the words of Doyle in The Sting ... ya follow ? )

Keep in mind, that shipper had paid ... extra ... specifically for this 'signature' thing ... and also paid ... extra ... again ... for the insurance ... only to find that what was paid was often not received, and that, according to their 'terms of use' fine print, was never even promised to be received ... So ... what was it said shippers were paying for, exactly ?

Now ... all this was on top of their ( UPS's ) propensity to break items into tiny pieces ... This worsened at around that same time, due to this same faster-paced 'efficiency drive' ... They had a 70 pound weight limit, and they won't pay insurance on a breakable rare item which they've broken , either ... even if it is packed, like another of my correspondents in New Jersey said of a package, " like it was going to Mars " ... because their policy is, if it can be broken by something of 70 pounds being dropped , or thrown, on top of it in their plane or sorting plant or truck, then you have to figure it will ... so tough luck ... it shouldn't be shipped with them in the first place.

So ... in short order ... shippers of many stripes figured out that " it shouldn't be shipped with them in the first place " thing was the best piece of advice they'd gotten, or were ever likely to get, from UPS ... and acted accordingly. ( The fact that they got the first $100. of insurance 'free' didn't justify the cost and hassle, if they weren't going to pay out on the back-end, that was merely a sham 'savings' on the front end. )

One saw, in those bad old days, literally scores of customers of even middling-rare collectible things begging, insisting even, that their packages NOT be shipped UPS ... even going so far as to say, they wouldn't complete the sale unless they were assured that it wouldn't ship UPS, because they'd rather not have the thing they'd been waiting all these years for, than have it arrived smashed or else go missing right within feet of their door ... and ... who could blame them ?

So ... for the run-of-the mill items, such as Amazon's mass-produced, easily-replaced books, it wasn't / isn't , for most folks a problem ...

For the rest ... they could get mighty browned-off ...

This all began back in the day, even before Al Gore invented the internet.

During this time, USPS cleaned up their act, and even began to surpass the couriers in many of their services ... they had to, in order to compete for their very survival ... and thus, the balance began to tip, from the ' Wonder Boys in Brown ' ... over to Big Blue ... ( er, well, the boys , and girls, in the big USPS-blue trucks, that is - IBM does not figure in this ).

Now ...that is all in America.

In Canada ... well ... in some ways ... it is even worse.

A great deal of the reason for this situation in Canada is not - directly - the fault of UPS ... however, they could make it better ... but they don't.

Oh, they can still leave packages ... even fragile ones ... and ones subject to damages ... on the porch or propped in the carport ... or tossed onto the cat's chair ... or onto the cat ... on the verandah ... ( a down-East correspondent of your correspondent was fit to be tied when a large box containing much of the irreplaceable worldly goods of a relative back in Europe, which had been super-packed and lovingly shrinkwrapped and had survived intact all the way from overseas, arrived at the destination, not only with its protective plastic torn and tattered , but was also deposited at the end of his very -long driveway, in a semi-rural area, way out of sight of the house ... although in plain sight of any passerby on the road ... and ... He only found out it was sitting there the next day ... soaked through, in the rain ... by accident ... when a neighbor driving by saw it on the side of the road by his driveway, and called him ... UPS never even told him they had 'delvivered' it ... although he had been calling ... and ... strangely enough it had been 'signed for' ... although they couldn't read the signature and none of his neighbors had that name ... Curiouser and curiouser ) ...

Anyway, the biggest problem with UPS shipments within Canada, is Customs. Canada Customs, that is. It doesn't matter how fast the service you've paid for, the delivery times can get knotted up for days, or a week, or more, due to customs delays.

UPS freight gets all put, higgeldy-piggledy, into a truck which trundles off, when it is full, for the nearest border.

Therein lies madness.

For individual freight, the whole shipment has to be cleared. If one thing in it is dodgy, or questionable, or held up ... then it can be all held up ... and sit there idly cooling its jets, until they finally decided to release the questionable one, or until they finally decide to give up on it and let the other stuff through. A very very painstaking process sometimes.

Your correspondent also has another correspondent, this time on the Wet Coast, who waited weeks for a simple, ordinary, albeit valuable, item to arrive ... one which he had promised a customer, who was also left cooling his heals ... and was beside himself worrying there had been a customs problem, even though all his i's were crossed and his t's were dotted ... until I reassured him that it was indeed, a customs problem, however, undoubtedly, not a problem with his shipment per se, and just to relax til they got it sorted ... Sure enough, it eventually arrived ... some 2 weeks after they'd told him it was in customs ... with no explanation, no apology, ( and no refund on his super-expensive 'speedy' delivery ... he lost that money, which he had to refund to his customer, along with a courtesy additional refund for the trouble ... but no-one had the courtesy to reimburse him. )

Yet another of your correspondents' correspondents, this time in San Diego, sent a shipment of small, but valuable items, and had them held up in customs so that they missed Christmas entirely, because, as her broker told her he was able to find out, some darn fool had sent a fruitcake, of all things, to a customer as a ' Merry Christmas greeting ' ... and hadn't declared it ... so the whole shipment was in limbo. Yes, folks ... fruitcake. To have your goods undelivered due to incompetance is one thing, but incompetence, coupled with a rogue seasonal confection, is a bit much to bear. ( Again, no apology, no refund of the exhorbitent shipping fees, as, they claim, it is 'out of our control'. )

The reality is, that if they are taking the big bucks to ship 'fast' , they could, theoretically clear the items separtely, however ... this, of course, would cost them, as they 'include' brokerage fees in those shipping fees the charge the shipper from the US ( customs fees are another matter, and are, quite rightly, the responsibility of the addressee) ... so they use this 'bulk clearing' to save money ... but it sure doesn't save time ... and can even cost money at the other end ... And, the rule of any carrier is the longer they have it the better the chances of it going astray or getting wrecked in their system.

To add insult to injury, after one has waited a week or more for one's ' 3 day delivery ' ( which one had paid extra for in the first place ... and, only if one had read the fine print, did one know they might very well be paying for nothing ) ... one may then have the thing unceremoniously dumped wherever ... and, after one has gotten it back from Harry the Hell's Angel next door ... one may, after all that, find it broken to bits .. only to be referred back to the ' 70 pound' rule, above.

What to do ... what to do ?

Well, your correspondent ... who had to, at many many times in the past, send and receive packages back and forth across borders ... including important and/or irreplaceable ( albeit not valuable ) items relating to family ... now neither sends nor receives anything via UPS anymore ...

After starting all gung-ho, then being nobbled in the end, even their stupid horse couldn't deliver as promised a few years back. Big Brown was a big brown-out. And after they put up all that dosh for a piece of him only after he won leg one of the Triple Crown of course, they didn't even have the courage of their convictions, but only jumped on the band-wagon in mid-run, so to speak ... ( There's a reason companies don't use race-horses in their advertising ... well, not unproven ones anyway ... it is because it is a gamble whether they'll win ) ... And, in my humble opinion, its a gamble whether you'll get your package on time, or even at any time, if you trust it to the folks in the shiny brown trucks. If you wanna roll that dice, best of luck to you ... but I honestly wouldn't advise it.

Disclaimer ... Please note, I have no stock in either Big Brown, ( the horse ), nor in UPS ( the company ), nor in any other freight carrier. Merely one woman's experiences, for your edification or entertainment ... As always, feel free to ignore altogether, or, in the immortal mantra of Mad Magazine, to use for framing or wrapping fish ;-)


Cheers ~
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby RationalKeith » Mon May 24, 2010 2:05 pm

Good to hear that the federal government did not pander to protectionists/xenophobes.

I understand that UPS and Fedex have undergone changes, contracting out deliveries in the Victoria area.

My experience with them in the US several years ago was both were bureaucracies, not following their own rules nor customer instructions. Fedex had deteriorated badly by the time they started a ground service (they may have purchased an also-ran delivery company to start, which is a risky approach).
There was also an odd mix in which UPS would get parcels to an area then put them in the US Postal Service for final delivery.
I’ve seen UPS recover from a sender’s error in postal code (well, they did have the rest of the address to figure it out from but normal sort is on postal code.)
OTOH, a thin envelope from Buffalo NY to Victoria got left in the sorting hub in St. Louis, then wandered around the US on some sort of Sunday cleanup milk run to Seattle, then to Vancouver and finally to Victoria which wasn’t a well run facility. Seemingly it never occured to UPS that the right thing to do for the customer was get it on one of the many airline flights Seattle to Victoria.

Yes, cross-border is a pita – last I bothered to look UPS’ form the sender has to sign as true said the goods sent to the US were of Canadian origin, never mind that goods made in the US might be shipped back there for various reasons including collectible items. “No sale.”

As for one company offloading extra volume to another, class companies do though have to be careful who as their reputation is at stake. The objective is “help your customer”.

BTW, typically you have to specifically ask for Saturday delivery, the services seem to think 9-5 office M-F hours (gee, even some banks have better hours :-).

- Keith, who thinks that if airlines, police, defense and fire are expected to run 24/7 so should everyone else. ;-)@
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby slowhand » Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:05 pm

Amazon.ca has started to use UPS again, if my most recent shipment is anything to go by.
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Howaboutthat » Mon Aug 02, 2010 9:37 pm

slowhand wrote:Amazon.ca has started to use UPS again, if my most recent shipment is anything to go by.


So what?
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby jon » Tue Aug 03, 2010 6:51 am

It probably just means that Amazon has their own Canadian distribution centre up and running (see article that started this thread).
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Howaboutthat » Tue Aug 03, 2010 7:45 am

Again, I don't see what the big deal is. If it gets there, what does it matter who delivers it?
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Aug 03, 2010 8:18 am

:read: "the gunfire was from an automatic weapon fired to the right rear of the president's car, probably from a grassy knoll...... "

UPI's Merriman Smith
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Howaboutthat » Tue Aug 03, 2010 8:30 am

Jack Bennest wrote:
UPI's Merriman Smith


They're rambling about UPS, not UPI you twit!
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Buckley » Tue Aug 03, 2010 10:16 am

Howaboutthat wrote:Again, I don't see what the big deal is. If it gets there, what does it matter who delivers it?


I gotta side here as well. Amazon's shipping is lightning-fast, I usually receive even the free "expedited" shipments in two or three days. I received a book from Amazon.co.uk in just over a week (about 7 business days I think). I don't care how it gets to my mailbox or door, only that I get it, and quickly (otherwise I might as well just go to the store and get it).
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby slowhand » Tue Aug 03, 2010 3:06 pm

jon wrote:It probably just means that Amazon has their own Canadian distribution centre up and running (see article that started this thread).

'Fraid not. My amazon.ca package just arrived from UPS with a return address of Assured Logistics, the Canada Post subsidiary that Amazon shacked up with to qualify themselves as CanCon to meet the government's requirement for booksellers.

Howaboutthat wrote:Again, I don't see what the big deal is. If it gets there, what does it matter who delivers it?


Am I the only one that finds it weird that a Canada Post subsidiary would choose to use UPS when they have two competing companies of their own? The mail and Purolator. Kind of like MacDonalds serving Dairy Queen ice cream.
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Aug 03, 2010 3:17 pm

Howaboutthat wrote:They're rambling about UPS, not UPI you twit!



HAT - let them ramble - its time for you to twitter :mousewalk over to the grassy knoll
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Re: Amazon Comes Back to Canada Post

Postby Howaboutthat » Tue Aug 03, 2010 4:45 pm

slowhand wrote:Am I the only one that finds it weird that a Canada Post subsidiary would choose to use UPS when they have two competing companies of their own? The mail and Purolator. Kind of like MacDonalds serving Dairy Queen ice cream.


Amazon.ca, to the best of my knowledge, is not a subsidiary of Canada Post and is free to choose whoever it wants to deliver their packages, be it in a big brown truck or a red and white van.

And that's the last I'll have to say on this ridiculous thread, and I apologize for being one of those that drew it out. :frantic:
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Closing chapter

Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Aug 03, 2010 7:52 pm

:hello2: UPS on the grassy knoll
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