Yes! UPS sucks ass and yet it seems to be the default for most companies shipping from the US to Canada. Grrrrr.
Also, it’s supposed to snow here again tonight. &@:(&/
As someone who sometimes sells on Ebay, shipping to Canada is terrible expensive and the time it takes to fill out all of the custom paperwork is not fun. I will take the extra time to look at shipping options and email the buyer with them. I’m not a big company, so I can understand why they won’t do what I do.
I like dealing with Canadians and folks in Oz. You understand that I can’t magically have your stuff delivered the next day.
The cat with vertigo worries me, but the debit card and personal info worries me even more. You did contact your bank right away, right? So you have money to pay for the vet visit for your cat. What’s up with that anyhow?
My worry for today is Tony. He’s becoming a recluse again. He doesn’t have a working vehicle so today he called me (at work) because he wanted to buy some catfood from me. Tony has a key to my house, he knows where the catfood is, and he knows that its OK for him to borrow it. Tony only starts to pay for this sort of thing when he’s off his meds and thinking about self destruction.
I went to deliver the catfood to him after work, and his hygene is really bad and the dogs didn’t bark. The dogs always bark happily when people are around. I’m really worried, because if Tony has done something to his dogs, he will start killing his cats and when he’s alone, he will climb the clock tower.
Maybe I can shed some light on the shipping policies of internet retailers to Canada, since I work for one. 
If your item is shipping out of our warehouse, I will try to work with you as long as you don’t want me to ship aerosols. PO won’t take them, and UPS and FedEx charge a lot to take them over the border. If your item is shipping from one of our vendors, we have to go with their shipper. If you have read this thread, you know that some of our vendors are made of suck, but they are the best option we have found (so far, anyway). I have several vendors who are made of awesome, but I don’t need to rant about them :p. Even my vendors who are made of awesome will only ship to Canada via UPS because of one main thing: they collect GST and brokerage before they will release the shipment. FedEx will deliver and send the addressee a bill. If the addressee ignores the bill, it gets charged back to the shipper, who then has to try to collect from a customer in a foreign country. Our policy is to re-charge the credit card, but that is not always successful.
My recommendation for our friends in the north is to sign up with a freight forwarder. That way, you get a US address, and a good one will let you know the costs involved up front. We use a particular one on our site, and I would be happy to provide a link to them if you send me a PM.
Hey Flatlined!
It is all ok, just a series of annoying events.
Novia was on an rx that worked wonder for her inner ear issues and the rx ran out…I had to deal with too many people at the vet and cvs before we straightened out that she had 6 refills left.
As for the debit card, it was a number that was stolen online a year ago. Luckily, because my phone was stolen (right out of my hands–thanks punk kid) and had a bunch of private info on it just a few months earlier, I hired a tracking and monitoring program through my bank. They caught the original debit card use, and I cx it out. Three days ago, they told me that their tracking picked up on it being posted on a website (chat room/mb) and said it was the card info and my name. After a lot of hunting around, it seems as though all the info is old (where I used to live) and the connection between the card number and myself are severed.
What a pain in the butt day. I figure I’m due for some good luck soon.
People: when you start a thread asking for help or suggestions, it’s only polite to return at some point and at least say thanks, fuck you, or something to let people know that you give at least a slight shit about the time they took to respond to your question. Cheers.
Well fuck you then. Now what did I forget? 
That doesn’t explain why some shippers stick stuff in an envelope (of various sizes) and successfully use USPS and only charge $10 or so, and some want to ship something of similar size via UPS and charge $30+.
Awww, guess who just found a mosquito bite by abset-mindedly reaching down and scratching … and then scratching … and then ooooo that itches …
- points at self * Yeah, this Doper.
Also, I learned yesterday that I seem to be physically incapable of pull-starting a weed-whacker. In my head I’m all “Yah! Yank that string! Pull it completely out of the fucking maching! I am such a motherfucking badass!” while out in the real world I get “put - putt- puttt - pfffff.”
On the other hand, once it was started for me and handed to me, I learned to use a weed whacker!
On the other other hand, the section of lawn I trimmed looks like hungover moths chewed it up and then it got mange. And my biceps are barely functioning this morning.
… and DAMMIT my ankle itches now! Stoopit mosquitos.
As a follow up to my car rant…
Mom, I can’t tell you just how much I appreciate you. We all know you’re having issues with your memory. You’ve managed to alienate your oldest daughter due to the crap you say. When I get off the phone with you, I want a large alcoholic beverage - and I don’t drink.
However, right now I just want to curl up under my blankets and cry.
You took the car to the mechanic Dad was buddies with. Dad has been gone five years now, they’re not going to work for free. They did cut you a deal - I bought the parts at cost from the store (while Dad is gone, his employee discount is not). They charged for labor. Why did you decide to pay for me? You’re broke! So am I, I was going to charge it, but whatever. You wanted to keep my car for a day. I still had the rental, so I said fine.
Instead of tooling around to “make sure” it worked, you took it to another shop because it didn’t feel right. What? They didn’t charge you for it, so okay. Wait, you did what? I now have two new tires? I didn’t ASK you to put new tires on it. And you exploded at the tire guy because you requested two new front tires and they put them on the back? Mom, that’s what they do. The old back tires are now on the front, the new tires are on back. Here are a bunch of references that show what they did is correct. No, you’re not going to take my car in a week and have it “fixed”.
I now owe you an additional $150 for something I did not ask for. I feel guilty as hell for being pissed as you wanting to help me, because your help goes too far. THEN you say you understand why “no one wants to work on my car - it’s dirty!” Mom, there was dust on the steering column. You can’t have a passenger in your truck due to too much crap, yet my car is a sty. Sure. Of course, Mom, I will not drive my car over 50mph as long as those “crappy” old tires are on the front. Sure, Mom, I’ll stop every time the needle shifts slightly out of drive (despite the fact that it has always done that and it doesn’t mean the car has shifted out of gear, the indicator is loose). Yes, Mom, I will keep every damn receipt known to mankind in the manual folder, and keep it on me at all times.
sigh I do love the crazy old bat, but damn I’m exhausted.
Stupid rant:
I keep seeing these news stories about kids ingesting hand sanitizer to get drunk. What the fuck? Who in the hell came up with the idea for drinking that shit? Yeah, it’s alcohol, but Christ on a cracker, why the hell would you go to those lengths to get hammered? At least steal something from your parents that tastes halfway decent or bribe an older sibling to buy you something. Fucking kids. There’s no accounting for taste these days.
(ETA: yes, I’m joking. No, I would never truly advocate stealing to get drunk or underage drinking, but shit! Hand sanitizer??)
Are you sure it was a weed whacker and not a lawn mower someone started and handed to you? I’ve never had my biceps hurt from using a weed whacker, even one of the old heavy ones with the shoulder strap. Maybe you’re holding it too tight or something.
When I was in high school, one of my classmates tried to chug a bottle of vanilla extract during chemistry class (we were making ice cream). At least that was a food product though.
You made ice cream in chemistry class? Damn, I went to the wrong school …
Dammit. I just blew things up in chemistry. Where the hell was my ice cream??
Post-dated rant. Yay! Sidney, my cat, is eating his new easy on the kidneys food and is also drinking plenty of water and using his litter box.
When I came home from knee replacement surgery to find that he had progressed from not eating much and being tired to not eating at all, not moving much, and peeing on the bed, I was too tired to rant. I just shrugged, decided that the universe didn’t want me to have any savings left, and took him to the vet.
He got nearly a week of IV hydration, all told, and three or four blood tests. No sign of anything besides age causing the loss of kidney function (he’s twelve). We brought him home Monday and waited to see if he’d stabilize on the new food and it looks like he’s going to. He’s much more active and happy.
My mobility has increased, but I still don’t have enough extra energy for a proper rant. Can we just stipulate the rant? I’d appreciate it.
Done. Best wishes for you and your kitteh.
Yay for Sidney and here’s hoping that your new knee works out equally well, Yllaria.
You might (but probably don’t) recall that about two months ago, I got two bullshit parking tickets. Well, I fought the law, and it was a draw. I got out of one, but not the other. So, this is not a rant, since I’m calling it a win. But, damn, talking to a judge is nerve-wracking.
(Here it is: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14869264#post14869264)
Now back to the rants.
I can’t tell you why the delivery method is different for that specific instance, since I don’t know what was shipped, or if it was an international or domestic shipment, or any other pertinent details.
We have some things we do use USPS for; most things go FedEx ground or SmartPost, which is a kind of hybrid between FedEx and the PO. If it is a fairly inexpensive item, we may ship it First Class mail with delivery confirmation. On other things, we may want an actual tracking number for proof of delivery, or the item won’t fit in a “if it fits, it ships” box. There are weight and size restrictions on what can go via First Class mail, and shipping Priority Mail with your own box gets expensive fast; we can usually get a better rate with FedEx, due to volume discounts. Parcel Post is usually about the same or sometimes more expensive than either Priority Mail or FedEx, and usually takes longer than either one of those options. So you can run yourself ragged splitting hairs over which shipper to use, all the while the phone is ringing, and online orders need to be processed, and all the other daily stuff of running a business. 
Sometimes, it just isn’t as easy as cramming something into an envelope and slapping postage on it.
Our school couldn’t afford to blow stuff up…so we made ice cream and construction paper flash cards.
My mother has planted a small garden this year. Because our soil is so hard, she planted everything in big pots. I just went out to check on a sickly-looking squash plant, and found that the soil is beyond saturated. It’s also very, very rotten. gag Nasty nasty nasty nasty nasty. I ended up washing my hands with some Clorox Anywhere.