Very interesting read! I always thought China's gov't just eats those shipping costs to subsidize exports. Turns out, we are! Since Canada Post is obliged to pay for the Chinese parcels delivered within Canada and Canada Post likes to keep its finances from going into the red, it's has to recoup the costs where it can. Such as its domestic shipping rates. Essentially buying something shipped from Canada subsidizes the item shipped from China. That's a nice deal for some of the participants.
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2023
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This makes it harder for local businesses in Canada to compete with those in China, hurting local ecommerce and brick and mortar shops. The playing field should be leveled and no one should be subsidized.
Or at least make a distinction between commercial and non-commercial mail. I understand subsidizing a letter to a developing country but this is just extracting rent.
Yup. It definitely makes it harder.
Some will always subsidize others, unless you're a libertarian, this is pretty much an obvious moral axiom. With that out of the way, China 30 years ago was probably worth subsidizing, but China today is not.
Better tl;dr than the bot. They should automate you!
AaaS (Amoeba as a Service)
There's also some pretty big business deals and discounts going on. If you go directly to Canada Post or UPS or Purolator or DHL, you're going to pay for the big price. If you go through a shipping company, you can get it for much much cheaper. I got over 5x cheaper on a few boxes I needed to ship across the border that way.
That puts individuals and small local companies at a pretty big disadvantage, on top of Chinese products generally being much cheaper to begin with.
Can regular nonbusiness users use them? This sounds fabulous
Yes, that's what I did. Basically they take people's smaller shipments, bundle it into a larger shipment that's much cheaper, and can manage to charge you less and still make a profit on it.
Neat! I known nothing about these companies, could you give me names of the ones you've used?