If you live in Canada...

Do be aware that there is no longer a surface mail option to the US. It is now more expensive for me to mail a parcel under 500 grams to the US than to the UK. I think this will spell the end of Book Mooch for me after I spend my points... such a shame.

No doubt about it: it's a bummer for all concerned. Without suggesting anything improper, for many people on both sides of the border there certainly remains the option of carrying things one way or the other, and posting them so as to take advantage of the domestic rates in the given country. And another No Doubt About It: Canada Post has a toxic level of right-wing political thinking, and a management "philosophy" which makes some parts of the private sector look downright Marxist by comparison. Or maybe there is doubt; still, that's the way I see it.

Which begs the question. If I mail a book from my near-the-border city to an American near-the-border city, are they really going to put my book in an airplane to fly it over the border? That makes no economic (or environmental) sense. Yep, only going to mail down south when I am planning a little jaunt over the border now.

carod, the question wasn't begged. You figured-out what I was talking about: as long as you're going wherever it is, take advantage (if any) of wherever it is you're going. It's not that complicated: people have been doing this for a long time.

Crap. This apparently went into effect today. This sucks.

Yuck that sucks. I've had a lot of great luck mooching from Canadians. Our rates to ship to you are going way up on Jan 27. It's lose lose all around :(

Not to lecture you -- for we are all losers in this business -- but it's part of a much bigger story, namely the systematic destruction of the once healthy (if not always happy) relation between two of the world's best neighbour-countries. I rarely hear this discussed rationally on either side of the border, and people seem to accept it with a disgusting kind of fatalism. Granted, a tiny LT Group is not going to change anything, but how many people who are incommoded by this kind of thing -- or plain fed-up with it -- have even once complained to a politician, or written to an editor, or gone on talk-radio, or raised the issue in any kind of public forum (church, town-meeting, labour union, etc)? O -- I guess I AM lecturing. But I'm not sorry. And for the record, this isn't a conventional Left vs Right thing. The PC swine who run things from Ottawa are not materially worse than the nominally progressive gang in the White House. They are both using the border as a laboratory to see what kind of domestic control their own people will accept. Please, God, let me be wrong about this, though I fear in my heart that I am correct.

Well... I sent a package to Missouri today from the post office at Shopper's Drug Mart... unusual for me because I love the online postage option from Canada Post. She offered me a surface mail option and I took it - $8.73 for a package that weighed just over 400 grams. So now I don't know what to think. Perhaps it depends on which state you are mailing to? I checked once again online and sure enough, they state that the surface mail option to the US has been discontinued as of January 14th.

If there is anyone who can shed some light on this discrepancy, please feel free to speak up!

I think you'll have to keep very quiet and mail all of your packages from Shopper's Drug Mart.

Maybe it was that cheap because it was thin enough to go as an oversized letter??

380 x 270 x 20 mm (15 x 10.6 x 0.8 in) and under 500 g

In re #8. The most authoritative info can be had from the usps Web-site. Honestly can't recall whether it's .com or .org -- either way, I know you can find it. In general, the charge is a function of distance. In the US, these things are really based on what are called SCFs, which are encoded as the first three digits of a ZIP code. Within an admittedly weird system there IS some logic to this. For instance, it's much farther across the single State of Texas than it is the ship from the farthest-separated points in the SIX good old New England States, where I'm sitting as I write this. I still think that when possible, you're best-off finding somebody travelling to the States. and having that person ship there. It's perfectly legal, and, I should add, considerably faster: one aspect of this whole problem is that International stuff waits on either side of the Line, for reasons which are incomprehensible to mere mortals like us. A package, say, from Winnipeg to Minneapolis can literally take longer to arrive than if it were carried by a bicyclist. As to service between the US and the Maritimes -- well, don;t get me started! Whoa -- you just did. -- G

#10 - great idea but this was a pretty thick book. I wondered if it might be over 500grams and then I would really get to see the price increase but we made it. I'm still baffled.

Thanks for the update.