Newsgroups: can.general
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Mail from Europe (was Re: American magazines in Canada)
Message-ID: <1989Jun26.153105.747@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Jun19.162903.21776@eci386.uucp> <274@sickkids.UUCP> <14675@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <645@dptcdc.toronto.datapoint.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Jun 89 15:31:05 GMT

In article <645@dptcdc.toronto.datapoint.com> denise@dptcdc.toronto.datapoint.com (S. Denise Neufer) writes:
>>... (isn't mail to Canada the same as the US rate?)
>
>If you ask the U.S. post office they will tell you it is about 10
>cents or so more...

The cross-border rates used to be the same (on both sides) as the internal
rates, but a few years ago some negotiations activated (on both sides) an
old clause in the US-Canada postal agreement that permitted raising the
cross-border rates.

>If you put a standard U.S. 25 cent stamp on a
>letter (this is the cost of mailing a letter within the U.S.), I
>have noticed the letter makes it here just fine.  

In general, you can get away with an awful lot if your letter/parcel doesn't
happen to pass by an alert postal employee, and there aren't many of those.
They tend to be cranky about insisting that there be a stamp on the mail,
but otherwise they seldom pay much attention to the details.  For example,
once in a while a reply card I'm sending back to some company has a
preprinted label with my address and is sufficiently ambiguously designed
that the Post Offal decide it's addressed to me and deliver it back to me.
My standard response is to throw it back in the mail.  It generally makes
it the second time, cancelled stamp and all.
-- 
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu