Choosing Battles

A mindful person, of comfortable means, should take care not to direct too much energy toward any spindling and mutilation received individually at the hands of vast corporations and revenuers and all, but sometimes, ya just gotta fight back, even though it's not personal.  Perhaps you choose the days when you feel your efforts to save the bees and whales seem to be going nowhere, and you just read that a vast underground glacier of radioactive waste - a remnant of developing The Bomb that fell on Nagasaki  - is drifting toward the Columbia River from (PUREX), the ironically named Plutonium Uranium Extraction Facility in remote Washington State. Perhaps you will take a day off from all that to compose a Letter of Complaint to a corporation that has dealt you an admittedly first-world boo-boo.  You know it won’t work, but surprise, surprise: it does. Hurricanes, earthquakes and fires are tearing up half the continent; the Orange One rants on, but the mailman has delivered, or rather deposited in our super mailbox down the street, a cheque from the offending corporation. The cheque arrived with no explanation except a stub noting “overpayment”.  You now have an extra $186 you can direct toward whatever cause you choose, and you will write to the offending corporation telling them of your plan, and retract your plans to blacken their name so energetically. After, there are other causes, that require much more attention and energy. Back to the bees. 

Here is the letter of complaint and my letter of thanks after having received the cheque.'

July 27  Dear UPS

$50 brokerage fee!!            
I received your bill yesterday. The company I ordered from is a small company that I have ordered from before. They haven’t developed a system for collecting duty and taxes like Lands End which is the only company in the universe that sells jeans that fit me. I had put the cautionary note on 2 previous orders, but this time I made the fatal error of forgetting to write on my order DO NOT SHIP BY COURIER. USE USPS.

When the driver arrived at the door with the bill for $180, I was so shocked I refused the shipment. How badly did I really need a new pair of linen pants?  I understand when the Post Office collects GST and/or duty, and charges their $10 for processing,  but on this bill there appear to be taxes upon taxes upon taxes, and brokerage fees upon brokerage fees, much of which you must remit to our government, ie “us”,  but $50 for an “Entry Prep Fee” for a tiny little package that barely weighed a kilogram!   Seriously.  Did you take it out to lunch?  Was medical attention required?  What did you do that was worth $50?  I paid the little company the $40 COD for return shipping and had the stuff shipped back via USPS.

I’m paying the bill because I know I’ll be plagued to the ends of the earth if I don’t, and I certainly wouldn’t want  to cheat the Canadian taxpayer of the $130 taxes on $CD 300 worth of clothing  which I could not find on a Canadian website  -  though I tried.  Meanwhile in Saskatchewan - Cameco Inc is trying to cheat the Canadian taxpayers of $2.2 billion with its shell companies in Switzerland.  I would pay my $130 in taxes and duties much more cheerfully if I thought such companies would pay their share, too.

However, as a service to other small purchasers of small things, I will spare no effort in making everyone I know to make sure they write Ship by USPS.  NEVER  use couriers when ordering anything from away. I am a storyteller and an ankle-biting FaceBook person, and will spare no effort to blacken your name whenever I can. 

Nov 4 Dear UPS

Further to my letter of July 29,  2017, thank you for the cheque reimbursing all charges on the $186 invoice sent  for a shipment I refused, including the brokerage fees.  Not having delivered the package, would have absolved UPS from remitting all those duties and taxes to Revenue Canada, but it did cost you something to get the package to me and therefore I call this good public relations. 

I have donated the entire $186  to the Nature Conservancy of Canada to help their campaign to raise funds to purchase back lands for an urban wilderness park in the Williams Lake area of Halifax Regional Municipality.  Although this  area was zoned for development of this park ten years ago, land-speculating developers continued to acquire property there, and used this to try to pressure the city to re-zone it for high-end residences, or else have to  buy back the property at inflated prices. It looked like the council was  going to cave in to this pressure.  We ankle biters called upon the council not to back down on the zoning, and a deal was reached through the efforts of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The NCC is soliciting donations to buy back the land. It shouldn’t have got that far, but the park will be there for future generations. 

I seldom need to use courier services, but should I in future, I will consider UPS,  and will share my story of have received a satisfactory response to what was a very irritating experience.