aactive said:
Only a matter of time before Amazon enters the space.
That may be but they don't have CandyCrave.ca with an absolutely gorgeous storefront.
Amazon has been in my space for years yet my sales go up every year. People like shopping with us because we have live people on the line or on email to answer questions and that has built our reputation and kept our sales strong.
So you have not received the infamous letter from Canada Post yet?
My brother has an online store I built for him and he got the letter too downgrading his commercial account.
Part of that downgrade is that they are also eliminating the charge account and you have to use a personal credit card to pay for each package. I called them and asked if they were insane, I said you cannot bill my credit card 100 times per day, it is bound to screw up sooner or later.
Their solution was to add a backup credit card on my account and I called them and asked them if they were running a temperature. Eventually after a month they activated a batch setting where I have to settle at the end of each day by running a batch of shipping labels and it hits my card only once.
Bad part about that is you cannot ship if you need to get 1 or 2 more boxes out after the batch. Another big issue is you have to print 100+ labels and make sure they get on the correct boxes. Before I just printed the label and stuck it on the box. It got billed to my charge account and then weekly on my credit card.
The system is so much more cumbersome now, so Yeah you are right, they are doing everything to drive business away.
That said they are one of the only services that goes deep into rural and p.o. boxes so we are stuck with them and have to play by their rules. Then again at $12.80 per box I won't complain because our average ticket price is about $150-$250 dollars and we still charge $9.95 shipping. So it is pretty easy to absorb that 2-3 dollar cost per box.