Canada Post Strike
What the Canada Post Strike Means for Everyone
It’s official: the Canadian Union of Postal Workers has announced a national strike involving its 55,000 workers, starting Friday, November 15th. You can read more about their ongoing negotiations here.
Below, we’ve outlined how this strike impacts customers with existing orders, those looking to place new orders, and our small business as we head into the holiday season.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us—we’ll do everything we can to help in a timely manner.
For Customers With an Order Placed and in Transit
Due to the nationwide shutdown, packages already in transit with Canada Post are temporarily halted. Unfortunately, this is beyond our control, and your package will remain in its current status until service resumes. Once operations restart, Canada Post has indicated packages will be processed in the order they were received. We sincerely apologize for this disruption.
For Customers With an Order Placed but Not Yet Shipped
Since Canada Post is not accepting new shipments, we’ve outlined a few options for you:
- Hold your order: We’ll keep your items and ship them as soon as service resumes.
- Switch to UPS: We can explore shipping your order via UPS at an additional cost, which we can discuss together.
- Cancel your order: If you prefer, we can cancel your order and notify you once shipping services are fully operational again.
Please reach out to let us know how you’d like to proceed.
For Customers Looking to Place a New Order
At this time, our only alternative shipping service is UPS Standard. Unfortunately, UPS rates are significantly higher than Canada Post. To help offset costs, we will continue using our regular Canada Post shipping tiers but charge the difference between Canada Post and UPS rates.
- For orders over $100, shipping is free with Canada Post; with UPS, we would charge only the additional cost (e.g., X = UPS rate - Canada Post rate).
- For orders in our $7 flat-rate shipping tier, it will be $7 + X.
- For orders under $40, full UPS shipping fees will apply.
Regrettably, we must also suspend our letter mail service until Canada Post resumes normal operations.
What This Means For the Stapletons
I think we are a smaller team than most people realize. We are made up of just our Stapleton family, Shawn, Gail, and myself, Indiana.
Over the years, we have grown from a tiny hobby business operating from our apartment, to now a tiny real business operating three websites and our storefront in Regina. As such, we are still a tight paycheque-to-paycheque company. The holidays are important for us as the Christmas rush helps us through the slower Fall and Winter months.
If the Canada Post strike continues long term we will be in for a bit of a struggle. We are doing our absolute best to communicate with you all and maintain great customer service. All we can do is ask for your understanding, kindness, and patience while we navigate this situation; we are in this together.
Please don't hesitate to reach out. We hope Canada Post and the union can negotiate a fair deal quickly and we can get back to sharing cheer this Christmas season.
Sincerely,
Indiana and the Stapletons