Shipping Horror?

Just recieved a package from The Green Sparkplug Company, UK.
Unlike most places I've ordered from there and in USA, these guys default to Royal Mail. Charge for shipping a 4" cube box to West coast Canada was $11 CAD. No duty nor brokerage charges applied at border.
Time to arrive was only 8 days.
Extremely happy. Wish more sellers would allow mail as an option when ordering. I guess they've had too many poor experiences with shipments going missing or not being insured for damages etc.

Royal Mail is fine.

But the end result depends on who takes over when they arrive in your country.

NZ Post seem to fit seamlessly with Royal Mail. Never had a delivery issue in 30 years.

The only pain if the value is high enough to go into the International Mail Centre in Auckland for processing for import duty. That can take 2 weeks plus.

But in the US it seems the US Postal Service has been gutted. Presumably so the courier companies get the work instead. Based on my experience over the past 5 years wiihout viable competition US courier companies are therefore extremely expensive and pretty hopeless.

Frankly I do not understand the cost of US courier companies. Shipping from the US is 2 to 3 times the price of a similar parcel sent to NZ from the UK.

I had a parcel from CNW go San Francisco, Japan, back to San Francisco and then finally to NZ. I had a parcel originating in LA vanish for a month before it arrived in NZ. A friend had an item from New York Norton take 9 months to NZ. Maybe 25 % of items take a surprisingly long time to depart the US.

Parcels from the UK to NZ usually take 5 days door to door.

johnm said:

But in the US it seems the US Postal Service has been gutted. Presumably so the courier companies get the work instead. Based on my experience over the past 5 years wiihout viable competition US courier companies are therefore extremely expensive and pretty hopeless.

Frankly I do not understand the cost of US courier companies. Shipping from the US is 2 to 3 times the price of a similar parcel sent to NZ from the UK.

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Don't get me started on Louis DeJoy who was appointed in the run up to the 2020 election.

Prior to the appointment, he was the founder and CEO of the logistics and freight company New Breed Logistics and was a major Republican Party donor and fundraiser. DeJoy is the first postmaster in two decades without prior experience in the USPS.

Controversially, his companies still hold active service contracts with the USPS.

Prior to the election, he had USPS dismantle and remove all of the automatic mail sorting machines in most major markets?

Why? Something to do with the absentee voting typically going D would be my guess.

The mail workers had a fit, as it made their work hell, as you would imagine.

Prior to then, shipping to/from USA/NZ was quite good. I would get parcels from Seattle in less than a week.

Packages routinely get delayed if they go through California. We in the US are being told we are in 'transition'. It appears to me that we are transitioning to a third world country. Welcome to the NEW America!