Last Updated on: 11th December 2013, 02:52 pm
In the face of mounting losses, Canada Post has come up with an innovative plan to keep its services sustainable. that plan? Massive service cuts and price increases.
The Conference Board of Canada study estimated savings of $576 million a year by eliminating door-to-door delivery to urban homes.
Those areas – which account for about one-third of Canadian households — will transition to community mail boxes. Implementation of the changes will begin in the second half of 2014.
The first neighbourhoods that will stop receiving door-to-door mail delivery have yet to be announced.
Stamps prices increasing
The price of a stamp for a standard letter is currently $0.63, but beginning March 31, 2014 consumers will have to pay $0.85 for stamps purchased in booklets or coils, and $1 each when purchased individually.
Uh…congratulations? It’s brilliant? Great job?
Only the government could come up with an idea like this. The post office is struggling because people aren’t using it like they used to. Let’s save it by making it overpriced and inconvenient.
Even worse, the people this is going to impact the most are the very ones who would really like to keep using the post office the way they used to, please and thanks. Old people. Most of the old people I know aren’t paying their bills online. Hell, some of them aren’t online at all. My grandpa thinks the part of the internet where you can talk to your friends is called Facepage. He uses the mail for everything. Today he was heading out to mail Christmas cards right after we got off the phone.
And he’s one of the lucky ones. He lives in the country so this home delivery business shouldn’t be a problem for him, but even if he was in town he has a car…for now. Some of the folks in his age group don’t have that. What is Canada Post doing to ensure that all of these new community mailboxes are located within easy senior citizen walking distance of bus stops?
And what about people with limited mobility? Are they going to be able to safely, easily and independently pick up their mail?
Forgive me for not trusting Canada Post to have thought of these things, but remember, these are the same people who failed to realize or even really care that much that blind people weren’t going to be able to use their PIN pads.
They’re also the same people who, to borrow a phrase from Carin’s dad, couldn’t organize a shit fling.
When we lived in Guelph, parcels sure were fun, let me tell you. Whenever we ordered something or some nice person sent things are way, one of 3 things would happen. the package would either come right to the door, it would go to a post office a half a mile or so away, or it would go to a different post office approximately the same distance away but in another direction. There was no rhyme or reason for this, at least not one that our nongovernmental brains could figure out. We could order the same thing from the same place over and over again, but we could never expect the same result. We were forever chasing down friends to read the cards for us so we didn’t take a guess and go to the wrong place, either that or we were phoning postal outlets to see who had a parcel and for which one of us.
I tell this story because it makes me think that somewhere, this community mailbox deal is going to somehow be similarly disorganized. Kitchener has so far been good to us, but not all towns and cities are created equal.
Before Canada Post rolls this out, they’d better make good and sure that it’s consistent and as close to perfect as is humanly possible, even if it means waiting longer than planned. Getting it right the first time might take a while, but it’s cheaper than being dragged through the courts and then having to fix it after you’ve already spent millions of dollars royally screwing things up.