Why does it take a letter from Canada less than a week to arrive in Cayman; but mail sent from Cayman to Canada often takes over two months to get to its destination in Canada? The staff at the post office in Cayman blames Canada Post. There is no disruption or strikes currently in Canada – and mail from there arrives in a timely fashion.


Auntie’s answer: I have also been frustrated many times from the apparent snail’s pace of posting mail overseas. In fact, I always allow weeks (not days) extra when calculating the right time to post something.

To find out about any specific issues with mail going to Canada, I posed your question to the Cayman Islands Postal Service (CIPS). I would like to praise the service for their quick response and offer to help, which I have included at the end of this column.

Here is what their representative said: “There are several factors that could contribute to the scenario identified in the question. We’ve not had any reports of priority mail items taking two months to reach Canada.  However, we are aware of factors that are causing some delays (about one week) with some mail to Canada.  The delays relate to our current routing for mail to Canada, but we are working on a solution and anticipate this being resolved by August.”

The official also suggested looking at the choice of mail class, which can affect delivery times, and wondered if the sender from Canada and the sender from here used the same class. I assumed you were talking about airmail, as opposed to the slower surface mail, in both directions.

Either way, the CIPS is offering you a way to determine what exactly is causing your postal problems: “If the sender who asked the question is willing, we have a way of ‘tagging’ items with a radio-frequency identifier that may help identify specific issues we are unaware of.”

If you would like to take up this offer, the CIPS suggests you email customer care or call Deputy Postmaster General Melissa Martinez-Ebanks at 945-6875.

I would be very interested in hearing the result of this tagging exercise if you choose to have that done.