September 19, 2013

Mr. Deepak Chopra
President & CEO
Canada Post Corporation
2701 Riverside Drive
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 1L5

Dear Mr. Chopra:

I am writing to express my utter disgust and disappointment with a policy at Canada Post.

About three months ago, my partner and I purchased a house in the beautiful community of Willow Grove, just outside the City of Saint John. At my new home, I have a community mailbox down the road where my letters are delivered.

As a self-employed individual working from home, I receive a fair number of parcels each month. Since moving, however, I found that I was consistently receiving delivery notices in my mailbox for parcels that had never actually been delivered to my house.

When I checked the tracking information on Canada Post’s website, it always said “Delivery Attempted.” But I’d been home all day, and nobody had come to the door. I even checked that the doorbell worked and installed a second chime upstairs so I could hear it from my home office.  

This wouldn’t be such a problem if the pickup location were nearby.

Instead, I’m expected to drive 19.5 kilometres to the Canada Post outlet inside Shoppers Drug Mart in East Saint John. By the time I’ve warmed up the car on a winter morning, driven there, walked to the back of the store, waited in line, picked up the parcel, and driven home, retrieving one package takes roughly an hour.

If I didn’t own a car, it would be even worse.

There is no public transit in Willow Grove. A taxi would cost about $39 each way. I could ride my bicycle—if it were working—or spend several hours walking there and back carrying the parcel.  

So I looked into why my parcels weren’t being delivered.

Canada Post’s website explained that delivery notices are left when:

• the parcel is marked “Card for Pickup,” or
• the recipient lives more than 500 metres from a community mailbox and the parcel doesn’t fit in the parcel compartment.  

My parcels certainly weren’t marked “Card for Pickup,” so I measured the distance.

Using Google Maps, my vehicle’s trip odometer, and a GPS, I determined the distance from the community mailbox to the entrance of my lane was 360 metres. From there to my front door was another 90 metres, for a total of 450 metres.

Last time I checked, 450 metres is less than 500 metres.

So I contacted Canada Post and filed a complaint. Hopefully my own parcels will start arriving at my home.

But that’s still not good enough.

What about my neighbour who lives 690 metres from the mailbox? Should they really have to drive almost twenty kilometres into another community just to retrieve a parcel?

What if I didn’t work from home and couldn’t meet the carrier at the door?

What if someone in East Saint John mailed a package to their grandmother in Willow Grove? Does it make sense that Grandma has to drive all the way back into East Saint John to collect it?

Should she spend her day sitting in a lawn chair beside the community mailbox just in case a parcel arrives?

I’m not suggesting Canada Post must deliver every parcel to the front door of all 14.8 million Canadian addresses.

But expecting rural residents to travel 20 minutes into another city to collect a package is unreasonable.

And if I try to retrieve the parcel on the same day delivery was supposedly attempted, it isn’t even available yet. I’m expected to come back the following day.

For a Crown corporation that consistently reports financial losses, it seems to be giving Canadians plenty of reasons to choose alternative parcel delivery services.  

There is a convenience store just three kilometres from my home. If Canada Post absolutely must leave parcels somewhere other than my door, that would seem far more reasonable than sending them nearly twenty kilometres away.

In the meantime, the next time I miss a parcel, I think I’ll take a taxi to retrieve it.

I’ll ask the driver to send the $78 round-trip fare to the President and CEO of Canada Post.

Respectfully submitted,

Too Rural To Matter

Daniel Mark Wheaton

cc: Ombudsman, Canada Post
Minister Responsible for Canada Post
Members of the Media