Royal Mail has announced that they suspended shipments to Canada until further notice. The ongoing postal negotiations and strikes between Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) effectively mean that Canada closed their doors to incoming parcels. It’s hurting e-commerce and might have an influence on coming events like Black Friday.
eBay have warned Canadian eBay users of potential delays, especially to inbound purchases arriving from overseas. eBay says that delays in the delivery of mail and parcel services across Canada have built up a significant backlog at Canada Post processing centres due to the rotating labour actions. For retailers shipping to Canada, an alternative is to ship via couriers wherever possible, as there is no end to the strikes in sight. Where there is an economically viable option available, it seems to be one of the only ways to realise a successful delivery in the near future.
– Royal Mail, 15th November
“As a result of ongoing industrial action, we have now been requested to suspend the dispatching of international traffic destined for Canada, from today until further notice. Items posted yesterday and entering the network today will be held safely in our international distribution centre, awaiting further updates from Canada Post. This applies not only to us, but all International Postal Operators. Canada Post are aware of the impact to all customers and are therefore continuing to attempt to reach a settlement with the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). We recommend you consider delaying sending items bound for Canada in the coming days as we expect this to remain the situation until we receive further guidance. However, if you still wish to send items bound for Canada, we are still accepting them and will continue to hold them at our international distribution centre.
Once we know the outcome of the latest negotiations, we will then either suspend our services to Canada, not accepting your items, or we will start to ease our backlog by forwarding items to Canada for distribution. The volume of backlogs currently being seen in Canada mean that it will take some time to clear these items, as overtime hours are being limited by CUPW representatives.”