Damned Allied Postal System

Ni Hao!

You may or may not know that the hub of operations for Firefly Cargo Bay is located in Canada. Now, I love living here, but running a small business from Canada when 99% of your customers are located in the States is not always the easiest. My main problem of late deals with shipping.

Now, things usually take about 2 weeks to get from me over that invisible line to anyone in the States. That was bad enough, but tolerable. See, they would always clear customs at Detroit or Buffalo or where ever the package crossed. Once they made it through there, they would be delivered to the person the next day.

Since September they all seem to go to a bulk processing post office in New Jersey (I know this because we had a long heated discussion about these policies with Canada Post recently). There it can sit until they damn well please. Seriously. Both countries' post offices say to us, "It's Customs, they can do whatever they want." Are you friggin' kidding me??!?!?

Now, I've discussed the matter with Ma Cobb to see how she handles shipping. She sends her stuff regular air mail and she says for the most part things arrive okay and in a timely manner. I'm a little leery of doing that because it doesn't come with a tracking number. Therefore if it doesn't arrive I A) don't know where it is and B) can make no claim on it. Unlike the Postal System, I do not like having to tell customers "oh well, you're S.O.L!"

So, where soes that leave us? I'm not quite sure. I'm looking into starting to ship UPS because the cost is not that much higher. HOWEVER I have no way of knowing what the brokerage costs would be and if the customer would have to pay any duty or taxes and such. I've looked into the next highest up method for the post office because they say the guarantee delivery in 6 days. When pressed, the postal agent admitted that was guaranteed to the customs point. And then again, it could sit forever.

I do not know what I want to finally do about all this at this point, but I am telling you it all because I want to let you know I am aware of the crappy situation. I am not happy about it in the least and I am working to rectify it. *Sigh* How come it never goes smooth?

Anyway! Hang in there with me please. I'm sure we'll get it all sorted out in the end. I'll keep you posted. No. Wait. If I keep you "posted" you won't find out anything for over a month! I'll keep you informed! :)

Until next time:
"Things always seem to get a little more complicated, don't they, sir?"