> I have a 6oz book I wanted to send to a friend in Indonesia. Took it to UPS
> where the lady told me that it would cost 90$ for UPS to ship it; 40$ if I
> wanted the post office to send it, and UPS to get it to the post office, and
> 20$ for the post office to ship it if I took it to the post office myself.
>
> I left, clutching the book, amazed at the efficiencies of private
> enterprise.
Canada Post is often reviled, government-run enterprise with a strong union, sometimes mammothly inefficient. I'd blame mismanagement by appointed political hacks, but others would blame those lazy civil servants and/or the union.
Sometimes, though, they do rather well. There's a special book rate. It was $7 a kilo Eastern Canada to China a couple of years back. Under $3 a pound in US terms. Took about 6 weeks, though.
-- Sandy Harris, Quanzhou, Fujian, China