Burrito West Blog

One of the things I miss about living in the US is being able to order stuff online (the other thing is cheap cheese).   Holy cow you can get anything online in the US and it will be at your door fast.   In Canada there is a dearth of online shopping options (though it has improved in the past few years).   One of the reasons there are so few places doing online shopping in Canada, I suspect, is because Canada Post is whack with their pricing.   I realized this when I would go to mail parcels home to Nova Scotia and Canada Post would ask me for my arm and leg in exchange. 

 

In setting up the online etsy shop for my craft group, I really got to know Canada Post's rates and they really are very silly in some ways.   I allow them a bit of excuse to have high rates - they have to (by law) deliver stuff to some ridiculously remote places in our enormous country, let's give them some credit for how hard and expensive that must be.  

 

But, there's no excuse for having a pricing structure like this:  

 

for a parcel that weighs 1 - 499grams = price A,

for a parcel that weighs 500 - 999 grams, price B, where price B is at least double price A.   

So, if my parcel is 501grams, I pay double what it would cost if my parcel was 499 grams.  

 

That, my friends, enrages people and is nonsensical.   It also kills online shopping because it's insanely hard to predict your shipping costs in advance.  Put a little too much packing tape on your package and you might go over that magic weight threshold and double your shipping price by accident.    Also, if your package fits through the magical 2cm thick slot, you're golden - you can ship something for a reasonable cost.  If it's, say, 2.1cm thick, your shipping price will (approximately) TRIPLE.  

 

But all that is not what I'm here to rant about today.   I'm hear to rant about the fact that because online shopping in Canada blows (thanks mostly to Canada Post, I believe), I have to order stuff from the US frequently.  Most US online places are nice and ship to us Canadian folks - thank you!  (Often their shipping charges are less than a Canadian company's.)  But, sometimes things get caught up at the border.   Like some beads I ordered.   A MONTH AGO.  

 

I can barely bring myself to think of it, I can feel my blood pressure rising....  what are they doing to my beads that is taking so bloody long??   Are they examining each one individually?  Because, the package is coming from Washington state and I could have WALKED there and back by now*.   It makes me absolutely mental.   A month is how long you would wait if you were a lady in 1850 waiting for a letter from overseas, not someone in 2009 waiting for something from less than 200miles away!   (That's like... a 4 hour drive on a bad day.)

 

I've got online orders for rings that I need these beads for, so I placed a second order with another company.... I've been waiting a week for that package.

 

My head may explode if there aren't beads in my mailbox when I get home today.