Monday 3 February 2014

Canada Post is to stop door-to-door service!

Door to door mail delivery. I remember it! In the city of Toronto, and in Ottawa. I used to get nervous picking up mail in Bala, when we had to go to the Post Office, in the dark. You never knew who would be about.

Only about 1/3 of Canadians receive door-to-door service. The rest of us have to leave our homes to get our mail.
They are going to cancel door-to-door service, they say, and build
community mail units across cities.
  • Some have mailboxes. (I've a photo.mov collection of them!)
  • Some have to go to the Post Office in rural towns.
  • Others go to community mail units (CMU).
Small CMU: Someone will have to clear the snow.
Short people need not apply.
The 1981 Canada Post ACT says Canada Post must pay its own way and not be a burden. They have to be financially self-sufficient.

CMU: nicely covered

Canada Post Corporation, and its affiliate Purolator Courier Ltd., collected

  • processed and delivered 9.23 billion pieces of mail and parcels during the 1997-98 fiscal year. 
  • serves 35 million Canadians 
  • served 900 000+ businesses and public institutions. 
  • delivers an average of 37 million pieces of mail
  • processes through 22 major plants to over 12.7 million addresses in Canada.

Units with 9 boxes



Bala Post Office
Seniors and people with disabilities would prefer getting service at our homes, as we have done so for the past hundred years.

Canada Post has done community engagement, they say. They found that residents would prefer alternate day service, rather than full cancellation of door-to-door.
Businesses want 5 day/week service.
Why does business wishes trump consumers?
It's a service, not a business.

There will be a lot of community engagement required to change to installing CMUs. They will be looking for people willing to let them use their lawns. Perhaps businesses will be able to grant a spot for these. People will have to put up with tromping outdoors, finding their way to a mailbox.
Many types
of mailboxes!

Notice the garbage can
There will be a lot of money required to build the CMUs, and a lot of letter carriers will lose their jobs. Isn't it important to keep people working?

Postal Service Charter says they have to provide 5 day/week, reasonable service. But wouldn't it be better to have alternate day service, rather than installing all these CMUs? But consumers, apparently, do not get a vote.
Batman in our mailbox!

4 comments:

eileeninmd said...

I guess they look for any way to save money. There was talk of stopping the Saturday mail here. I would not miss mail on Saturday, most of the time it is junk mail.

Red said...

I am one of those people who would rather get mail once a week. Think how much easier this would be for seniors? I get my mail delivered daily. I don't need that much service.
When I was in the Arctic I sometimes had to wait 6 weeks for mail.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari Om
Not good - ideas of this sort tend to go viral and other postal services start to get calculating.... Am yet to fully catch up on British postal habits, but I know in OZ a lot of utilities providers or deliverers will not post to anything other than a street address. Boxes are a no-no for many things UNLESS you are a business.

...and definitely there should be dispensation for seniors and the less able! YAM xx

Hilary said...

I'd rather mail delivery be far less frequent.. .maybe once a week maybe every date that ends with a 5 or a zero (or the closest weekday to one of those). I don't think daily delivery is necessary for any of us. Businesses included. Most communication is done by email and bank transfers, these days. Our seniors and disabled would be majorly inconvenienced by ceasing home delivery but then again, what else is delivered to our homes? We still need to go out and get groceries, buy other things or access other services. Why is postal delivery the last holdout? Financially, I think it makes sense for them. They've lost a lot of business to the electronic era.