Canada Post and eBay

I occasionally sell items on eBay and this morning, a potential customer contacted me to inquire about shipping a clock (parcel weighs just over three pounds) to Portugal.  I headed to the on-line Canada Post parcel calculator for a quote and this is what I discovered:

·         Small Packet International Surface - $21.07 – no insurance option – would take   approximately a month and a half to arrive.

·         International Parcel – Surface – now coming up at $40.62 (but half an hour ago was $37.79).  This would also take a month and a half to arrive but you do have the option of buying up to $1000 worth of insurance.

·         Small Packet International –Air -$50.26 including $100 insurance but no option to purchase any additional insurance!

·         X-Press Post International - $77. 22 (half an hour ago coming up at $73!) – seven day delivery supposedly guaranteed and insurance.

Alas, I have used surface overseas mail before and there is no way these parcels arrive in the time frame Canada Post suggests.  The last one took almost three months! So for a difference of $10.00 ($12.00 half an hour ago), the only possibility would be the Small Packet International Air for $50, except for one thing – no additional insurance option.  Surely I was misunderstanding this.  How could the cheaper surface shipping be insurable but not the air mail? It made no sense.

So, I called the Customer Service 800 number and indeed, I was reading the webpage correctly. Only up  $100 insurance for the air mail parcel is allowed but up to $1000 on the cheaper surface option.  Why?  The best answer I could get was “because it was a Small Packet”, although the size of the parcel did not change for any of the other quotes. When the representative suggested my best option was the X-Press Post for $77.22, I asked who in their right mind would pay $77.00, and her answer was to say “that was none of their concern”!

And that is where the problem lies.  Have any of these rates been established by anyone using a single realistic thought? Perhaps Canada Post should be concerned about such ridiculous rates and policies, especially considering what a boon on-line auctions have been to postal systems in general, and since these rates have a significant impact on Canadians being able to compete in the world-wide marketplace. Sending the information on to my potential customer in Portugal, I felt like a complete idiot. In order to have adequate insurance, he either will have to pay in excess of $77 or be prepared to wait for months to receive his item.  Have I heard back from him?  Of course not!

And one final consideration...Ebay is now charging their final value fee based on the selling price as well as the shipping amount.  In part, the intention is to encourage sellers to offer reasonable shipping charges to their customers.  Since “reasonable” is not any part of Canada Post’s mandate, we clearly have a problem.

Set a "Made In Canada" price for gasoline

Although this is may be humorous image, the rising price of gasoline is no laughing matter.

Nothing irks me more than smiling newscasters always urging us to “get used to it”; always reinforcing the idea that there is nothing we can do about it. Then, there are their recommendations: Get a smaller car, don’t drive an SUV, take public transport, ride a bicycle, walk, carpool, work from home. And while I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with those, in the end, it’s not that simple. For example, the average person can’t just go out and buy new vehicle and public transportation, bicycles, walking, carpooling and working from home are only solutions if you are able to implement them. Yet day after day, the media works hard to instil the notion that it’s us who have to make all the compromises, never the oil and gas industry.

Along with a growing number of Canadians, I believe we need to set our own “Made in Canada” price for our own resources. If the NAFTA agreement is preventing us from doing so, then it needs to be changed as soon as possible. Instead of being given free rein to create economic chaos, the oil companies need to start making a few compromises of their own, such as making reasonable rather than obscene profits.

Interest on Utility Bills – A Penalty for the Poor

Following the news that the Ontario Energy Board approved Ontario Power Generation’s application to raise power rates in order to pay $18 million dollars in fines incurred by charging up to 60% interest on late payments, I emailed CBC Marketplace with a story suggestion. I propose an investigative piece on exactly how much utility companies across the country are actually making from interest on overdue accounts.

In my province, seniors, low income and even mid-income Albertans constantly struggle to pay exorbitant utility costs, especially power. Several years ago, a teacher I know in Calgary remarked that in winter months, the only time a number of her students were warm enough was when they were in school. And yet, these are the very people who routinely get another 24% – 30% added to their bills. The people who can least afford it!

For years, I’ve also suspected that utility billing cycles are not quite as random as the companies would like us to think. For instance, if your bill comes due on the 24th of the month, you live cheque to cheque and don’t get paid until the 30th, then you are automatically in an interest situation and I think this interest has become a gold mine for utility providers.

In our climate, I believe that heat and light need to be recognized as essential services and regulated as such. Higher than credit card interest does not belong on these services and it is time to stop penalizing people for being low income Canadians.

Psychic Fair

This is one of the best emails I've recevied in a long time!

Pet Insurance - Don't Get Sucked In!

Shortly after welcoming a Bernese mountain dog into our lives seven years ago, she somehow managed to break three bones in her front foot outside one evening. By the time this injury healed, it ended up costing about $2400 is vet bills and got me thinking perhaps we should take a look at pet insurance for the future.

Armed with pamphlets from the vet's office, I began some intensive on-line research. I telephoned three different companies so I could ask questions directly, made notes with columns of pros and cons and eventually settled for a company that I believed offered the best coverage in terms of deductable, percentage paid and monthly premiums. Curiously, there were several times on the phone when I was certain I had spoken to the exactly the same telephone agent at two different companies, however they always assured me I was mistaken.

A number of friends were sceptical. One woman, a local dog breeder, suggested that instead of paying a monthly premium to an insurance company, why not put that same amount into my own ‘pet insurance’ account? That way, it would be there if needed, with no deductable or claim percentage to erode its value. I admit I did give this some thought, however, not nearly enough as things turned out.

Over the next five and a half years, the insurance premiums continued to creep up, (always attributed to "rising veterinary costs"). Along the way, the company name and the underwriter changed and so did many of the terms of the original policy. Despite all my diligent initial research, what I ended up with was not at all what I had signed up for. Finally, when I received notification that the deductable had risen to $500 a year, I decided to cancel.

But of course, I was mollified by the agent on the phone. I had misunderstood. The $500 was only a "one-time" deductable, she explained, therefore much more advantageous. Okay then, I thought, that certainly made more sense. After all, who in their right mind would agree to a yearly deductable that high? And in the end, I was talked out of cancelling.

In September 2010, we lost our beautiful big dog to bone cancer. I submitted about $1300 in eligible receipts to the insurance company and received two cheques - one for $100 and one for $50! (Oh yes, I can't forget the sympathy card.) But even after the $500 deductable and the percentage, by my calculations, they still owed me at least another $500. What had happened?

What happened was: I was right to begin with. The $500 deductable was a yearly deductable, just as I thought. Again, I had "misunderstood". And in addition, the receipts I sent in (although all incurred between May and September of 2010) apparently represented two different policy years, so $500 was lost to the deductable for each year.

In the five and a half years I had the pet insurance, the very basic premiums cost approximately $1600. So in my case, if I'd listened to my friend and put that $1600 into my own insurance account, I would have been about $300 ahead after paying the $1300 in bills. I couldn't believe I had been so stupid!

The more I've thought about my friend's idea, the more I realize what a good idea it is. If you follow through with making the monthly installments to yourself just as you would with the insurance company, there's very good chance you'll do as well (or better) on your own, and, if you are fortunate enough not to have to use the fund, then the money will have acted as an extra savings bonus for you!