Like I said, USPS is massively subsidized by the treasury, it's not just the pension situation, their rates are lower but are rising rapidly, for example they ditched the lower international rate for mail to Canada recently, now it's $1.10 for all international mail, and it's $1.10 in Canada to mail a letter to the US.

So same rate, Canada Post has no margin to lower their rates from what I can see. They don't have that subsidy.

Royal Mail isn't comparable because of the geography.

Like I said, compare the Fedex rate, you can see from that what difference the USPS subsidy makes because Fedex uses USPS for local logistics (i.e. they deliver to the post office in many cases). Because there is no saturday delivery in Canada they have to do it themselves so the rate is way higher than in the US. Plus there's a market there for them that doesn't exist in the US.

Stuff under £15 is VAT exempt on import into the UK, which is why they put their warehouse on Jersey. Clearly they wouldn't bother to do that if there was no competitive advantage.

I just don't accept that the only reason USPS rates are cheaper is because of government subsidy, that would not be a logical way to run the company if they lost money on every parcel sent. I still think CanadaPost is over-priced and that they could reduce their rates, whether it would be by simply changing the way their pricing system works or by becoming more efficient. At the very least, adding a tracking # to a parcel or letter should not double/triple the price in this day and age.

Traditional mail is one of those obsolete systems that will eventually disappear. Simply no reason for it. People don't tend to send letters any more. Most correspondence/bills/documents can be supplied online and sent instantly.

As internet usage and availability increases the postal system will decrease accordingly.

Depends what counts as traditional mail.

The vast majority of our Amazon orders (mostly 'marketplace') arrive by Canada Post.

Although I can pay either on line or pre-auth, my property tax and water bills arrive by mail. There's no other option.

Everything to do with prescription coverage and other medical stuff arrives by mail, ditto my P60s (x2) and any new tax coding info.

Insurance claims, student loan contact, some Canada Revenue contact all done by regular mail.

Every option to go paperless that's what we do but there's still significant ordinary mail. Maybe having five adults in the house makes it more obvious.

I received the same notice, thought it was p*sspotical as well.
I priced up sending 1 scarf to about an hour away from where I live, $8.50, no tracking on that. A year later I was speaking to the girl I know in the PO section at Shoppers, she asked if I could fold it so that it would fit through their envelope measuring doofer. Same scarf but in a slightly bigger envelope, just under £2.50 to anywhere in Canada which is a fantastic price and should help me in with selling online, it should but it hasn't so far.

@How long

(anything to do with Ace?)

I had that experience. I had to send diabetic test strips to my wife when visiting Montreal. The visit took longer than expected.

I sent the first batch in their little pot and it was just too wide for the doofer. It was getting on for $10 I think.

The next batch went wrapped in kitchen towel for about $2.

BristolUK
Excuse my ignorance, what Ace are you referring to ? (that's no by the way)

You've been here too long.

When it comes to international rates the USPS isn't much better these days price wise and in many ways cost more now.

My mom sent me a package that is 4 pounds in a smallish box. 37.00 in postage.

I could mail the same package to my mom from Canada for 25.00.

I think the days of cheap postage in the US is now over for international packages, domestically there is still the flat rate boxes which keep shipping costs down.

Who said the US Govt. is logical? Article.

They lose $25 million every DAY. $16 billion last year. I.e. the total of ten days worth of trade between the US and Canada.

Or in other words, they lose in four days the amount Canada Post makes in profit in a year: http://www.canadapost.ca/cpo/mc/abou...nualreport.jsf