Postal Stories/Rants Good, Bad and Ugly. Post Here
- Thread starter Wailua Boy
- Start date
FYI - most items shipped to Canada from the USA fall under NAFTA and are duty free. Canadians are generally exempt from duty (live fish are duty free) but we are charged GST (and PST if applicable) when foreign goods arrive on our soil. UPS etc charge a "brokerage" fee for doing the paperwork , so always best to use the regular post office (USPS and Canada Post) on imports, and for live fish airport to airport and clear them with customs yourself. Do your homework first to avoid surprises.
Non fish related, but years back when I was in the shipping business I shipped a product from Western Canada to South Florida. Approx 1 year later the item arrived & customer emailed to inform me how pleased she was. Once I had picked myself up off the floor I asked her why she hadn't let me know sooner that it hadn't arrived in a timely manner, and she said "I just thought that things took longer from Canada". Apparently she was correct.
Non fish related, but years back when I was in the shipping business I shipped a product from Western Canada to South Florida. Approx 1 year later the item arrived & customer emailed to inform me how pleased she was. Once I had picked myself up off the floor I asked her why she hadn't let me know sooner that it hadn't arrived in a timely manner, and she said "I just thought that things took longer from Canada". Apparently she was correct.
I just had an interesting situation receiving a fairly large order. I had opted to decline delivery and pick up at UPS customer care center due to a local heat wave. I had noticed it was 9am and still no call notifying me of package, typically the package is delivered by 10:00am at my house. Tracking number is saying it's on island but not ready for pick up. I try calling, of course its an offsite answering service; they tell me they can't understand why the delivery address is the same as their customer care center. I inform her I had requested to pick up at center. She says needs to check, comes back 5min later and says they believe the package had been requested to be picked up; I reply, I know I just told you that. She asks for my number and is going to contact customer center and they will call back in an hour. Immediately, I hang up and start driving down. I walk in, request package and am informed its out for delivery. I respond, that's a big problem because these are live fish(clearly marked on the box) and because of the heat; they likely will all die. At this point another employee has come as is trying to help, she opens up another computer and says, this computer says the package is actually here. So both employees begin looking for package, its no where to be found. Of all the orders to go missing, why this one? After a few phone calls, I am informed; the package is actually caught in quarantine and hands me their number. I reply, well this package was destined for inter island travel, therefore no quarantine is required. She makes another call. Mean while the other employee finds the package. Nice. The other lady comes back and says, well this package will need to be sent to O'ahu and your fish will never make it. At this point, I know the lady is completely full of s!@t and has no idea whats going on. To make an even longer story short, after more arguing and phone calling, they release the package. Luckily no fish were harmed in the making of this story.
I have to vent. Another missing package, scheduled for delivery 11/04/15; still missing. Poor fish
Have had good luck and bad luck with receiving live fish. Prefer buying from my lfs if at all possible.
I wonder why the woman said the package would have to be shipped to O'ahu when you were standing right there to collect it?
Just until recently I have never bought anything live that needed to be shipped to me. However my LFSs "fish list" is getting smaller and smaller all the time and the prices slowly climb. 
I am in the market for some aquatic turtles and Oscar to fill my tanks with and I am tired of the beat up no color offerings. Anywho.... I order dry goods all the time. I would have to say my best results have come from Amazon.com. They ship quickly and no matter what shipping option you choose the package always shows up sooner. I have had instances where the product is actually from out of the country and took a month or more however. That was my fault for not noticing the items location and shipping window before purchase.
My little trick on shipping costs is that I have a couple friends who own businesses and they have business accounts with USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I quite often save $10+ on everything I ship and have even saved $30 on a very heavy package that they came and picked up!
I am in the market for some aquatic turtles and Oscar to fill my tanks with and I am tired of the beat up no color offerings. Anywho.... I order dry goods all the time. I would have to say my best results have come from Amazon.com. They ship quickly and no matter what shipping option you choose the package always shows up sooner. I have had instances where the product is actually from out of the country and took a month or more however. That was my fault for not noticing the items location and shipping window before purchase. My little trick on shipping costs is that I have a couple friends who own businesses and they have business accounts with USPS, UPS, and FedEx. I quite often save $10+ on everything I ship and have even saved $30 on a very heavy package that they came and picked up!
I have had issues with all shippers including airport to airport. Lost, smashed, left on dock in winter.........
