Posted on 12/17/2013 12:41:41 PM PST by TurboZamboni
Dec 11 (Reuters) - Canada's postal service will phase out urban home delivery within five years and hike the cost of postage stamps to try to stem soaring losses, the post office said on Wednesday. Canada Post, like the U.S. Postal Service, is suffering as customers switch to digital communications. In August it said it was on track to run short of cash by the middle of 2014 unless major changes were made. The government-owned corporation - which has a mandate to be self-financing - last month reported a third-quarter loss of C$109 million ($103 million) before tax and said mail volumes had fallen 7.3 percent from the same period in 2012. It must also deal with a C$6.5 billion deficit in its pension plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I meant Amazon should make USPS a wholly-owned subsidiary.
They are probably going to leave all the mail on will-call at the local hockey rink (since they can be pretty certain that the average Canadian will make his way down there at least once per week)
I think the idea is that there will be cluster mailboxes in more and more neighborhoods. I live in a development that just opened two years ago and that’s what we have — 60 or so boxes on every other corner. Speeds up delivery considerably.
See, I'm a thinker. Problems solved.
Je suis confused. If youre phasing out home delivery, why do you need postage stamps?
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Without postage, how does your mail get from Calgary to Toronto. Home delivery is the end game, not the whole game.
No one said they would stop selling stamps, have to make up for the losses somehow!
What you are saying as sarcasm today will be reality in a few years. The GOP may even want to prove it is still relevant and take the lead in this continued effort to screw the citizens.
I pay bills on line but will not switch to electronic billing. Our system has been down so many times over the years it is just not reliable enough. Viruses, failed hardware, failed electric and low capacity of the system. We upgraded to fiber optic and Netflix over loaded it. We don’t have Netflix but the grandkids down the block do. If there is a holday or snow day we loose internet capacity.
“The Canadian Union of Postal Workers said it would react to the corporation’s plan later in the day.”
Hey, I think I just spotted the problem.
I’ll hand out the mail at mail call.
Je suis confused. If youre phasing out home delivery, why do you need postage stamps?
C’est simple! Probably you can pick up the mail at local post offices or depots.
To borrow a quip from Gallegher: "Have the Jehovah's Witnesses deliver the mail. You know their going to ring every chime".
Many neighbourhoods including subdivisions built after the mid-1980s have “community mailboxes” within a few blocks of the residents. Kinda like shipping to a PO box. For parcels, most have to be picked up at the nearest post office anyway because anything that won’t fit into a home mailbox will not be left unattended; if you’re not home they leave a notice with instructions on how to claim it.
The USPS doesn't cost any of us a single penny in taxes. It has to pay for its operations from the sale of stamps and packages, Why all the vitriol?
A millennium or two of history proves paper to be the best archival depository of info to date.
Probably more reliable and trustworthy than the USPS, on averqage.
That’s exactly what they’re planning; they started doing in in new subdivisions back in the 1980s. For parcels it’s an improvement, because each cluster has a few large lockers- the place the parcel in the locker and put the key in the recipient’s mailbox. Saves a trip to the post office.
Canada Ping!
Hopefully the residents live in nice hoods where the so called community boxes are never know who is going to smash you in the face and still your items, The whole world is going to pot if you ask me.
One of the blessings of living here is that even in the worst “hoods”, there is very little vandalism of public facilities. Mailboxes, bus shelters, payphones and even coin-operated newspaper boxes are usually in good order.
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