I was mailing something to Canada and wanted it returned back to me. The clerk attending me was too busy thinking about his next shooting spree to be of any help. He kept repeating, “They don’t accept our postage and we don’t accept theirs.”
After 5 minutes of this, I asked for his boss,who informed me I needed to buy reply coupons. He couldn’t tell me how many, whether they needed to be affixed, if the coupons were used as actual stamps or cashed in for postage.
I never got my post returned to me and now I have to do the same, but to England.
Help me!
They lied to you. I am originally from Canada and my wife I send stuff back home to family and friends very often. It is more expensive to send things to Canada from the states (IIRC, it is $.45 for an average letter, my wife actually handles most of the mailing). Keep complaining up the ladder, or try a different post office, I guess.
Best of luck.
“Glitch … download” - Glitch’s final action. sniff
I’m not surprised your local Post Office was a bit clueless about International Reply Coupons (IRCs). They probably go for months between selling them (and years between redeeming them, but that’s another story).
IRCs are redeemable for the basic unit weight of postage. I think that’s 1/2 ounce, so you’ll need two coupons for the average letter.
The coupons themselves are little slips of green paper, maybe about 3"x 4". You enclose them in the envelope and mail. To return, the recipient puts the letter in an envelope and visits his local post office, hands the clerk the coupons, at which point the clerk (if not totally baffled), puts stamps on the envelope.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.” – Strother Martin, anticipating the Internet.
It must be covered at stamps.com, trystamps.com, e-stamps.com ?
Glitch
You can send mail from the US, using US stamps, to Canada. To return something to the US, the person in Canada would have to buy Canadian stamps. The OP was for the original sending including return postage. They cannot just send US stamps.
In my Catholic High School, one of our teachers, a Fransiscan order priest, mentioned that he visited some fellow Fransiscans in Canada every now and then. When he did so, they would always give him mail to put in a mailbox when he returned to the U.S. Apparently, this was much faster than Canadian mail. And the mail was usually going to places in Canada, so I take it the Canadian Postal Service isn’t exactly a pinnacle of efficiency and dependability. This was about eight or ten years ago, BTW.
–It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
From the United States Postal Service web page, http://www.uspsglobal.com/info/welcome.htm
Diceman said
You got that right, I can’t even remember the last time we had a decent shooting spree!
pweetman
Thanks All.
Silly of me to go to the post office to try to get this info. I should have known to come right here to the Dope.