Zeb
I've thought of using greyhound collect..... fantastic service, but poor tracking ability. Couriers charge more than the average cgn'er wants to pay for shipping.... so canada post it is.
The issues i faced last year with tracking and parcels was the postal outlet i was dealing with at the time.The elderly chinese lady there was stashing parcels and they were gettting missed by the postal pick up trucks and sitting in the storage room at the outlet..... I no longer deal with that postal outlet and was instrumental in having that poor lady removed from her position with Canada Post.
Heck i sent Winz an oprod last month from one of canada posts central stations.... not the kind in a store, the actual canada post building in surrey, b.c. They managed to lose that oprod, even though it went express, 5 day with tracking and signature. They have no record of the tracking slip in thier system and are fighting me over the insurance. I have the tracking slip AND the till receipt. I'll have to eat over 200.00 as a loss, but will not share that loss with my customer. Winz will get a new oprod within a week or so, or i will gladly send him back his $$$ . I'm just glad he's not one of those guys airing his issues out in the forum......
anyhow, I've said enough. i guess i could pull the plug on the whole operation but then with an average of 6 to 10 rifles arriving every week for custom work....... and not one of those clients complaining.... I'm onto a good thing. retail and product developement can wait untill i am able to organize things and carefully choose someone to handle the retail side. Until then, things will stay as they are. Besides, I prefer working on the rifles, even if there isn't much money in it. Retail is of course the road to profits, but i'm not too concerned about that. I do this because i enjoy it and because there aren't many options for a gunsmith in this country when it comes to someone specializing in the M14. yes there are a few.... but after guys bringing rifles to me that had been butcherd by other known smiths in this country...... I decided to step up to the plate and do what i enjoy, customizing and tuning the rifles.
So with that, I've got 2 barrels to nick down and a full usgi build on my plate today, time to get back to work.