Canada Post Announces the End of Urban Home Delivery

Lev13than writes "Canada Post is phasing out urban home delivery, raising the price of a letter to $1 and cutting 8,000 jobs to cope with dwindling volume and a projected loss of $1B/year by 2020. About 1/3 of Canadian homes currently get mail delivered to their door. Deliveries will remain weekdays-only and business will be unaffected (at least for now). Much like the USPS, Canada Post is mandated to be self-funded, but 5% annual volume declines and rising costs are taking their toll."

Comments

Slightly misleading.

[PhotoJim]

Buying stamps half a dozen at a time reduce first class rates to $0.85; businesses using postage meters will get $0.75. Not cheap, and still a big increase, but the $1 rate will be paid by a very small number of people too cheap to buy stamps six at a time.

As for home delivery, it'll be sad to lose it but the alternative, the community mailbox a few doors down from most houses, will have one advantage: parcels will be loaded into it for you to pick up. Currently if you're not home you have to drive to the nearest sub-post office to get your parcels. This will be way more convenient.

Re:Slightly misleading.

[davecb]

They don't at our cottage, where this is already in place. Instead, the boxes are about half as big as necessary, and the driver sticks a card in the box. You get to drive in to town to pick them up at the post office.

Re:Slightly misleading.

[compro01]

What I don't get is why they just don't just raise the price of first-class mail. In the US, as a lower-volume mailer I'd be okay with spending a dollar to mail something, I end up mailing something about four times a year. It'd still be cheaper than using UPS or FedEx or the like...

Because unlike in Canada where Canada Post control their own rates, postal rates in the USA are controlled by Congress, several members of which have interest in sabotaging the USPS.

Re:Seems to be another death spiral in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Some, like this, are created by disruptive technologies

Horseshit. Pensions are the cause of this mess, same as for the USPS. These outfits have pensioners collecting full freight for 30+ years after retiring in their mid 50's. This particular death spiral has nothing to do with disruptive technology and everything to do with abusing the public treasury.

Re:This kills on-line businesses

[compro01]

Boxes don't work for parcels, even in apartment buildings, where they used heavily. Parcel delivery has the same problem with boxes: everyone ends up getting a postcard and schlepping off to the local pickup point because the darned boxes aren't big enough to hold the parcel. And big boxes are unaffordable!

Canada Post thought of that years ago. The community mailboxes have sizable parcel compartments (usually two, one "C" size (13.5x30.5x35cm) and one "D" size (30.5x30.5x35cm) for every 18 normal "B" size (13.5x12.5x35cm) mailboxes) built into them. If you have a parcel, they stick it in the parcel compartment and put the key for it in your own mailbox.