How's your country's postal service?

Started by zmaster18, June 22, 2015, 12:44:00 pm

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zmaster18

Recently I ordered two huge 50lb+ packages of goodies from Japan, only to have Canada Post not deliver them to my apartment. I've had this happen a few times in the past, but these 2 packages are huuuge. Every time I have to carry them from the post office to my place, I break my arms and back and can't even lift my arms for about a day. I found out that Canada Post will stop home delivery altogether in the next few years, unless you're disabled.

How is that fair? What if you live 30mins away from a post office? You would have to carry this 50lb 1m x 1m x 30cm box in your arms, or buy a friggin handcart just to get your mail. My post office is in a basement level of a building and doesn't even have an elevator if I had a handcart to use. What if you lived in Nunavut and your post office was an hour away? You would need a dog sled just to get your next shipment of video games. This is bull  >:(

Canada already has one of the most expensive mail services in the world. Now we aren't even getting stuff delivered consistently. This is one reason I wouldn't mind being an American... to get good mail service.  :upsetroll:

What's your postal service like?

M-Tee

Mine's great. Small country means normal delivery between major cities is overnight. Free tape and newspaper for filler at the post office, and the deliveryman usually calls personally before bringing a package.

MaxXimus

Wow. That's basically the exact opposite of Canada Post haha... In my experience they don't even try to see if you're home before leaving a failed delivery pick up card. I have watched them through the window quickly stick the card on my door without my package in their hand and then run back to the vehicle. It's insane how lazy our postal system workers are.

fcgamer

American postal service sucks.  I've had so many problems when shipping there, and it was always on their side of things.

Taiwan postal service is great.  The people at my local office are slow and unmotivated to work fast, but the quality of the service is good.  Fast shipping around the country and also to other countries, fairly cheap postal rates (fair rates) when sending abroad, etc.  I can send a huge box of goodies to the USA for $35 with tracking, arrives in 10 days tops.  Send a huge box of goodies from the USA to abroad, with tracking, it takes a month or two and costs $70.  Crazy.
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nerdynebraskan

I'll defend the honor of the US Postal Service. I have excellent service 99% of the time. They are admittedly a bit on the expensive side, especially for international shipments. But that's my only complaint.
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fcgamer

I had the situation from hell with the US post office, just back in January.  My mother was over in Taiwan visiting me, and during that time I had sold some unlicensed Genesis stuff to a collector in Pennsylvania.  I even thought about just sending it back with my mom and having her sent it out for me when she returned to the USA (she lives in PA too), but decided against it.  $350 worth of merchandise, no need to take a chance on something happening in transit, and many of the items irreplaceable (at least on my side of things).

So I packaged it up one night while talking with my mom, dropped it off a few days later.

Towards March I received a message from Paypal saying that a claim had been opened against my account.  I checked the tracking data and it said it had made it to Philly, so I called the guy out on it and then we both calmed down, and discussed it like normal humans would (we both had solid reputations for buy/sell/trade).  He talked with his post office and they even said, "Because of the volume of traffic the US Postal Service gets, we can't track packages unless they have tracking; unfortunately a few get lost".  This made me extremely mad, as I had paid an extra dollar for tracking...so what is the purpose of paying for tracking if the postal service washes their hands of the responsibility anyway?

We held out for a few months and the package eventually did show up, albeit at a neighbor's house, two months later.  The package had been floating around the USA all that time, it had left Taiwan and was bound for the USA within two days after I had sent it out.  Obviously this is not the norm, but the whole thing just left a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the quality of their service.
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egg_sanwich

I second how awful Canada post is. The prices they charge are absolutely insane as well. I live near the border with the US, so I try to do a lot of my online ordering at once, then drive across the border to pick it up and ship out packages while I'm down there.

Also, whenever I've worked out trades with people, I prefer to do it when I'm living in Japan. It's cheaper to ship from Japan to the US than Canada to the US (explain that), and the package will actually arrive.

/rant.

zmaster18

For smaller items, it is cheaper to send from Canada to the US. For example, I can send an AV cable or something to the US for $5, but in Canada it's a minimum of $10 to send stuff, unless it's less than 2cm thick. I use lettermail to send cartridges all the time, but bigger things require paying a lot.

So I bought a dolly/handtruck for $70 to get my 2 50lb parcels. Everything just barely squeezed onto the escalator. Then I wheeled the heavy cart 3 blocks back to my place. If I had used my arms this time, I would have totally injured myself. One box was especially heavy since it contained a butt-load of consoles.

chowder

People bitch about the mail here (country-wide it's Royal Mail), but generally they're very good.  Most of the problems here come from the cheaper services - anyone who lives in the UK probably has a story or two about one called Yodel :D

L___E___T

Oh man Yodel...  I'm amazed they're still allowed to trade they're so infamous.
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iStreet

PostNL is 95% save. Works fast. Within the Netherlands next day delivery. And in Europe max of 3 days. Always insured up to €500, if barcode is placed. (Package is always barcode) small enveloppe is a option.
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number47

In Estonia it's pretty cheap and fast if you are sending inside the country - usually you have the package next day. There are 4-5 decent shipping companies on this small area so competition is tough. But... if you want to send something out of the country then they all charge you one foot, trigger-finger and soul. For example using out national postal service (Omniva/Eesti Post) - if I would like to send EMS parcel with modded Famicom to Germany it would cost 60€ (about $67), if the same package was sent to the US or Canada it would be 67€ ($75) .

Some smaller firms provide shipping services with decent prices, but they ship only to Europe. One Finnish company Itella/Smartpost can transport my Famicom package to Finland for 12€, to Germany for 25€ and to UK for 45€.


DDCecil

In the U.S., very hit or miss.

Currently, a package I bought from waterclocker seems to be going in circles around his area for the past week for some strange reason.  :crazy: