Flat Rate Box..........

 As I have mentioned in a couple of posts, I purchased a Flat Rate Box to send my little girl's birthday box up to Nunavut, as it is a much more cost effective way to mail things.

The boxes come in three sizes, small, medium and last.  They cost $15, $20 and $25 respectively, plus the ever present 13% HST tax on top of that.  You can have up to 5 kg in these boxes and they can be sent all over Canada. 

I bought the big box and when I took it too the Post Office to ship we decided just for the "fun" of it to see what it would have cost if I had used a regular box:

As you can see there is quite a difference in price.  $61.26 versus the $28 something I paid including the taxes.

Why I am talking about this; is that prior to me shipping this birthday box I had never heard of this service?  Also when I went to see where I could get one, imagine my dismay to find there are very few places where you can pick up these boxes.  You would have thought that your local post office would keep them?  My local post office doesn't and didn't even know where I could get them.

I looked up online here and you can see how few the locations are in Canada where you can buy them.  Why?  Turns out it's a "pilot programme" that's been in the "pilot" stage for nearly two years?

I posted a message on Facebook asking them to make these readily available all over Canada, no response from Canada Post, no surprise there.  

I know people from various countries read this blog, do you have something similar in your country?  For the Canadian readers, have you heard of this?  Is there another way I could ship things up North?