Whew, I just finished a pretty grueling work marathon, with the final lap being particularly brutal. It’s my fault for taking so many afternoons off to go exploring! I usually don’t work like this, taking half days off, preferring to get my work out of the way and then going to have fun, but I’ve been working around the fickle weather. It wasn’t particularly nice out yesterday and it rained all night, but it’s finally cleared a bit.
Today was a taking care of business sort of day. I needed to send something out for warranty replacement, so John’s Printing and Mailing Service dropped off a label I asked him to print, packing material, a box, scissors, and tape. I had my own Magic Marker at least. 😀
John vetoed my choice of post office since it’s just a counter and sent me to a proper one that he promised would have parking. I got there and there were about 15 people ahead of me in line and nearly as many ended up behind me since there was only one guy working the counter. It took almost 15 minutes before someone else showed up to at least process the people just picking up parcels, and then another service counter opened.
Even though I was only returning a small hard drive (barely bigger than a credit card), the box was pretty big to accommodate all the packing material they told me to use. So I was shocked that the cost to mail it was just $7.05. A similar box would have cost $30 to $40 to send a comparable distance within Canada. The clerk actually apologized for it costing so much! WHAT?! I mean, it’s going ‘priority’, which means it should be in Riverside in by Friday and I got a tracking number. What a good deal! I’m glad I didn’t go with UPS, which would have been $$$. Western Digital gave me a discount for UPS, but it would have still been more than $7.05.
The post office wound up being a very good location since it was very near a mall that had everything else I needed for today, an ATM, a grocery store, and a sushi restaurant. 🙂
After lunch, I was thinking of going downtown to walk around, but the sky looked threatening. I was tired and still have a project left to do for tonight, so I just got my groceries and came home. BTW, I bought beer, assembling a really nice mix of six beers I’ve never tried, and did not get asked for ID for my first time ever buying booze in the States! Smart of me to let the grey hair at my temples grow, huh?!
Tomorrow should be a nice day and I have an excursion planned, thanks to advice from my local guide!
I have found USPS to be doing a GREAT job these days. My best story of the high quality service is shipping a box on Saturday at noon from a small town in Wisconsin and having it delivered on Monday in New York City… Priority Mail. Superb service.
You probably could have gotten a small Priority Mail box at the post office and it would have been $5.50.
On the other hand, a couple of recent experiences with UPS service has been awful, both in delivery and customer service.
I am enjoying your adventures!
USPS has always served me well!
My best USPS story was buying something from Key West on eBay on a Tuesday morning and it was at my RV park in northwest Washington Thursday morning!
UPS almost trashed my credit by sending me to collections for an invoice I never received (no follow-up invoices either, just straight to collections!) and has otherwise behaved badly. I can’t stand them and will go out of my way to avoid using them!
Glad you had a good day and no rain for a while. I wish Canada would improve it’s postal service to at least 50% of the US system. That will never happen 🙁
Our postal system makes no sense at all. I know we have a 10th of the population of the US, but, really, a lot less ground to cover. I know that one of the reasons our mail is so pricey is because our fuel costs are so much. I think that one way to get around that would be to have a new slow poke rate for people who aren’t in a hurry. Instead of it costing at least $10 to mail a book, have a much cheaper bulk rate with the understanding that there needs to be so many pieces going to the destination before it gets mailed, with a maximum delay time.
I actually find the speed of our mail very acceptable. My mother has sent me something from Montreal on a Friday afternoon and it made it to my hamlet by Monday morning! That means it got to Regina overnight, which is amazing! But there are cases where I’d sacrifice speed to save money.
It takes 7-9 days for a letter to get from Kelowna to Edmonton so you did good getting something from Montreal that fast. If I mail something here in Kelowna to someone here in Kelowna it goes to Vancouver first and then back to Kelowna. Certainly not efficient.
It’s similar where I am now. They are apparently no longer sorting our mail in Regina, but rather in Winnipeg. It costs me less to mail a cheque to my RM than to drive the 18KM to get there, so I sometimes that option if I have no reason to go to Willow Bunch. I mail the cheque from my hamlet. It gets picked up and taken to Winnipeg to be sorted and then goes to Willow Bunch. Takes about a week. Ridiculous.
YIKES…
Makes some of my purchases from the Orient on eBay even more amazing. The item may be a dollar or two and the price INCLUDES the shipping! Some of the items come very quickly (7 days or so) but most take quite a bit longer, but because of the price it makes it acceptable.
Mail in Canada does sound a little frustrating.
Shipping from Asia is often a very good deal. It’s not super fast, but the low cost makes up for it. Our mail system is ridiculous.