As someone who works at Canada Post I definitely cannot disagree with the thread title, however:
1. Insurance claims are more likely to be processed properly if the shipper has a business account and the shipper makes the claim. (too much he said she said with regular customers, and the corporation just cares about its bottom line) So my advice to you is to get a free venture one small business account and document everything. Complaining to the customer service hotline usually doesn't get you anywhere since they have nothing to do with the actual process or paperwork, you would need to get them to forward you to the right clerks for your situation.
Also, package stuff like its going to go through a war zone, even if every single employee at Canada Post treated your parcels with the utmost respect, its still going to get abused. How on earth do people think we ship millions of parcels a day? We shove them in steel cages or pack them loose in giant trailers. In both scenarios they get thrown around quite heavily in transit and on the sorting machines. If your parcel happens to be under a lot of heavy boxes in transit, (think dumbbells and car parts) it WILL get crushed.
2. There are people that can find your lost stuff, but you typically wont ever be able to get in contact with them easily. Depending on where your package was lost your best option is usually to call the superintendent or head supervisor at your local depot. Now most of the time complaining to them will only give your local delivery agent or RSMC a hard time and most of the time its not their fault - so please complain responsibly. (chances are they have delivered hundreds of other parcels since you realized yours might be lost)
However if your parcel was lost in transit between stations or at a sorting plant, you're usually SOL waiting for the UMO guys to get around to processing your parcel. (Which could be years, UMO jobs are highly coveted since they have no deadlines and easy schedules) Lots of packages lose their address info, so make sure you have some sort of packing slip inside to expedite the process if/when it gets lost.
3. From what I've seen this is usually an indicator of an overloaded depot or route. They arent actually trying to deliver your package, they just need to keep it in the system and find somewhere to hold it until they can. Otherwise it gets returned to sender if it goes unclaimed for too long, which screws over the customer.
You can:
Call the superintendent or head supervisor at your local depot and hope they realize they need to restructure; or
Sign up for something like Flexdelivery.
Complaining to customer service about anything usually gets you nowhere, since in the eye of the corporation the recipient of the package is not the customer, the shipper is. Getting in touch with the actual people that deliver your stuff on the frontlines is usually the way to go.
Also I recommend NOT registering for paying duties online, usually CBSA and CP wont bother charging you unless you're unlucky or there is something obviously wrong with your package. Doing it online just makes it easier for them to do so. You will make more work for the guy that has to collect your duties, but keep in mind they are required to not have change on them so any excess cash they get from collecting duties is basically a tip for their extra work.
So yeah, Canada Post is horribly mismanaged but its usually not your delivery guys fault.
