The Lee Valley/Canada Post Problem (originally at postalproblem.ca) is a website setup by Leonard Lee (owner of Lee Valley Tools Ltd.) to bring exposure to Canada Post‘s current methods of parcel shipping cost calculations.
It was also at this time that we found they were not actually measuring volume; they were measuring the maximum dimension of packages in three axes. This meant that a box of triangular cross section would be charged at the same rate as a box of rectangular cross section of the same height, length, and width even though a triangular box has half the volume of the rectangular box of the same three dimensions.
As part of the exposure campaign, a full page add was placed in the January 11, 2006 Ottawa CItizen by Lee Valley Tools Ltd.
According to the information presented on The Lee Valley/Canada Post Problem website, Canada Post may be using an illegal unit of measure that they call “volumetric weight”. Sounds like this could make for some interesting reading over the next couple weeks.
No one said you have to pass Grade 12 math to work at Canada post…