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Post office losing out to email?
JR writes "CBC Newsworld reports that Canada Post, in an attempt to lure people back to snail mail, has launched a new advertising campaign. "I think when most Canadians sit there and watch Canada Post extolling the virtues of old fashioned letter writing, they're going to laugh," says one interviewee. "
I can still articulate a pen so when I want to send a personal expression, I use pen and paper.
I've been waiting for close to two weeks now for
a small package to arrive from a friend in the US.
Maybe next time we will use UPS or FEDex. No wonder
people are turning to email, too bad you cant send
a few peices of hardware through a modem. =)
The government fattened emperors standing guard over a rapidly aging domain that hasn't seen any major innoviations beyond letter sorting are going to have their rice bowles taken away from them over the next 20 or so years. It will truely be a case of bureaucracy finally getting what it deserves.
EnGaurde, Keepers of the atom domain! Prepared to be digitized!
Does it like really suck or something? & everythings delayed?
The postal service is a heap of shit anyway. It takes ages for a letter to reach its destination and then if it rains the letter arrives and it looks like someone has pissed all over it.
Email has none of these problems.
I bet post will be obsolete by 2010 and then the only use for envelopes will be for arse wipes and I'm not going to even suggest what to do with pens!
The problems:
That leaves junk mail, P.O. boxes, and parcels which the commercial carriers can't be bothered to deliver.
However, the post office does have one advantage over commercial carriers: there is an outlet in every small town. If you're in a small town, chances are the nearest UPS center is a 30-45 minute drive away. So, I think postal services will be losing a lot of money over the next few years, but it's difficult to see how to eliminate the necessity for them.
DON'T use UPS, whatever you do. They are the WORST of the couriers out there. A friend of mine sent his TV to his place in Boston via UPS, and they cracked it in half like an egg.
So, I went and saw the movie 'The Thin Red Line' (piece of crap movie not worth the money I paid to go see it, but that's another story) and saw one of these new Canada Post commercials (commercials before movies??? What's up with that?). Anyways, it was quite silly and I think that *everyone* in the theater was laughing after the commercial. I thought it was one of the Molson Canadian Sacrilige Moments you can see on the Comedy Network. Stupid stupid commercial. I haven't written a letter since I had to bitch at BMG for not terminating my account! Anyways, just thought I'd add.
Jeff (jivany@nbnet.nb.ca)
The CRTC is a prime example of Canadian inertia with respect to ANYTHING new. This unelected group of censors will do ANYTHING THEY CAN to preserve the fat, rich, unelected status-quo. They have ruined satellite TV for canadians country-wide (both C band and DSS), and you better believe they are looking into ways of ensuring 'canadian content' on the 'canadian' internet (whatever the fuck that is).
It would NOT surprise me if they mandated that all canadian email must go through Canada Post routers or some bullshit.
FUCK the CRTC.
These days I don't even need the post for bills anymore. I can arrange to have all my stuff paid electronically. Everyone else I need to write to has E-mail. So I can sit back and gloat when they raise their rates again to pay for some stupid new logo they thought might bring back those customers who have, for some reason, been disappearing in droves lately.
Thats bizarre, and probably a pain. I expect the US does. Im from UK, and we do saturdays.
Has anyone ever seen any 'happy' postal employees? They always look like I ran over their best friend or something, jeez if the job is that bad quit stupid...
Standing in a long damned line for penny stamps made me wish I had e-transfers for my bills, then I could have laughed at them all the way to the bank...er from home...
jmr
I have a friend in management at Canada Post, and he is not an "overpaid, underworked beaurocrat: as one poster said. He works 60-80 hour weeks, and earns little compared to a comparable position in private industry.
That said, I work at an ISP that is helping reduce the letter traffic that Canada Post is carrying...
"Canada Post is encouraging people to use regular mail instead of e-mail. And in a related development, Bell Canada is urging its customers to give up their telephones and go back to two cans and a piece of string." -- David Skoll
Say, what if you want to send mail to someone in, e.g., Northwest Territory? What are the possibilities that the addressee has e-mail there?
Dunno, but methinks post still has some life in it before it dies comepletely.
Only one problem I can see with an ani-snail-mail knee jerk.
Everyone here is in a priveledged position. We have all got access to a computer, telecomunications infrastructure, even electricity. We do live on a planet where the clockwork radio may be a more important communication revolution than the internet.
Some of us may not know it, because some of us may not ever communicate with anyone outside of this priveledged circle. That's the danger.
We may not be creating a global village, just a global secure community. If our only means of connection with those outside is lost we may be in danger of forgetting they exist.
The thought of that makes me very nervous indeed.
No, it really is another win scored by going with Linux.
Canada Post, along with US Post, has gone automation crazy, to the point US bulk mail goes out for about 8 cents a piece for a nonprofit. Linux runs the barcode and address readers and mail sorters.
The crazy part - the Post services forgot about all that badly written hand addressed First Class mail. That has to be done with incredibly expensive humans, who make a lot of errors. Junk mail now moves _much_ faster than nonautomation First Class.
The reason our govt's hang on to these services, is that they need some guarantee that people get their govt mail - you know, Income Tax notices, property tax bills, court summonses, deficiency notices, and all that rap.
Contrary to popular belief, every organization in Canada isn't part of the government or an offshoot of an American company. :-)
Oh, ok, I get it...anecdotal evidence is king. Just because one package got messed up according to the [probably exaggerated] account of "some guy", the service that UPS provides for millions and millions of other packages must also be pretty bad.
Hey that sounds pretty good, next thing you know well be tying paper around a piece of rock and throwing it through windows for hands on delivery
not funny I know.......
I had to send a bunch of xmas presents up to Canada and the fastest was thru FedEx. The slowest was DHL. UPS was in the middle somewhere.
Canada Post sucks ass and should only be used in desperation.
only major town in Quebec missing Cable access to the internet is Sherbrooke,Montreal have it,ST-Hyacinthe have it,Drummond,Quebec,i think chicoutimi does,who's missing ??
Canadian AC
The government won't let the Post Office disappear either. I wouldn't be suprised if they start charging some kind of sin tax on every e-mail sent out. Imagine that nightmare. Yes, it could happen.
About three years ago, I was living in Trois-Rivieres, 90 miles (150 km) east of Montreal, and someone sent me a letter and it took
3 weeks to get there from Montreal...
England's a backwards place, what do you expect? Far less people there have access to email than in North America (excluding Mexico in the definition of North America).
Yeah, why don't we wait weeks while the post comes by horse-drawn carriage.
I guess you haven't met Simon then have you? Do you think admins like to work long hours for low pay to satisfy the unending demands of whining lusers who couldn't type an email address correctly if it was stapled to their hand? Sysadmins really need a union damnit.
Sure, if you have a week to wait around for that important document to arrive, go ahead and snail mail it. If it's something that is time critical then certificates and digital signatures are more than good enough. Let the lawyers wax their canes over the issue for all I care.
Sol talk about the digital revolution and the superiority of email and so on- don't forget that you are a highly savvy group of people from the wealthiest and most advanced nations on Earth. The idea that everyone will have email is preposterous, considering that most people don't have computers, and many people don't know what a computer is. The poorest regions aren't going to gain computer literacy overnight, and for them hunger is by far more important than email.
The rate increases for USPS havnt been bad. They like to point out that it has been increasing at less than the inflation rate. This latest increase was annoying tho, not for the money, but because it was just one fricken penny. So I had to go buy two bucks worth of H stamps and stick two stamps on everything now. Annoying...
In one show, the Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckaby (sp?) congratulated Canada on the "restoration of your National Igloo."
In another episode, Harvard students and a professor (!) decried the Calgary seal hunt. They also congratulated Canada on the opening of its first university.
Well, it's to be expected. If you watch U.S. news, you get the feeling the rest of the world doesn't exist (unless the President needs a convenient Great Satan to distract from the interminable impeachment proceedings. Current U.S. news almost makes me pine for the O. J. Simson trial...)
--
David Skoll
Keep enjoying "the highest standard of living in the world", fool. Say hi to my separatist friends for me, and don't forget to pay your obscene taxes.
We will continue to rub shoulders with Yankee and make $$$ while enjoying more freedom and less taxes.
God bless America!
-Canadian expat troll
: Does it like really suck or something?
;)
Well, I got a Christmas card from a friend in
Port Hawkesbury (about 350kms away) in April.
-Patrick Stewart
-zinobzspibam@sanondspwiamch.net
Bell Canada IS a parent company.
Offshoots include several other phone companies, Expressvu satelite TV, a Cable Co in the UK...
> So what country is Bell Canada's parent company located in then? ;-)
Da great country of Ottawa Valley eh.
It might be fun to remind folks that Alexander G. Bell was not an American.
Ta,
-MikeR-
Posted by PsychoPig:
E-mail rules
way faster and easier than regular mail
no postage charge
more reliable
just better
All I have to say is after many warm, friendly, and even romantic emails and mail, I still have and treasure the regular mail. There is just something more permenant and timeless, and human about it.
~ ^~
Luckily the Post Office will never stop delivering letters, becuase there will never be a lack of demand.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~
ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have.
You are the lucky one. My bills regularly disappear into the postal void. I have to take payments to work and mail them there, or they too will disappear. The junk mail seems to allways get through.
PS, can anyone explain to me why people constantly want to fax stuff through the Internet? Isn't this totally redundant?
Good question! The one I really wonder about is when two companies who both have email communicate as follows:
On the other end:
Repeat as necessary.
I have seen this done. Give these people a nail gun, and they'll turn it sideways and pound the nails in (making sure the compressor is turned on because it won't work without it).
I have never had any problems with Canada Post; On the contrary, I once had a package sent to me with my name misspelled, my street number wrong, the street name misspelled, the province and postal code both flat out wrong, and it *still* got to me eventually. The worst I can say is that they're sometimes slow, but I've never lost anything.
Yep, both USPS and FedEx deliver on Saturdays. Only UPS does Mon. to Fri. only.
On another point, it's interesting that sending a package to Canada via Global Priority Mail takes about 5 days to reach its destination, yet regular mail on the way back takes 7 days. Hmmm...
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Definitely. My case follows.
I was sending a computer (mistake #1) fro Puerto Rico to Pennsylvania. So I packed it up, took it to the post office (mistake #2), and sent it via Priority Mail, along with some other stuff in a separate box. When the computer arrived, its case had snapped off, the front plate was hanging from a few cables, the expansion cards were out of the slots, and one of the harddrives died. Fortunately, I had paid for insurance. So when the computer was taken back to the destination post office to claim the insurance payment, they said they had to send the computer to St. Louis (from PA), and had to wait two months to get any results.
The USPS definitely deserves the qualification of SHIT, tops.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
PS, can anyone explain to me why people constantly want to fax stuff through the Internet? Isn't this totally redundant?
-- The unsig...
And YES, I speak from experience having lived there for 36 years, seeing the rise of socialism en force. I am no longer a tax resident there because of just this kind of idiocy. After fighting politically, I realized the best way to fight them was to deny them my tax dollars, legally.
What will likely happen is that there will be a "tax" on email, so that the revenues can go to "protect" the jobs of the postal workers.
Canada: A nation where it is illegal to pay for health care quality when the government will provide the same service, at mediocre quality, for "free".
In Liberty, Rene
Read: "this KIND of idiocy", not this PARTICULAR example of government idiocy.
This is just the latest in a long trend of Canadian government screwups.
I lost my Canadian tax residency over a year ago, after a couple of years of planning, and not in response to a single incident.
Canada levies heavy taxes to support it's crumbling social safety net and other government services.
But that's not all. You very quickly find yourself in the top tax bracket at about the equivalent of US$35,000 a year income. At that point, not only do you pay high taxes (about 51%), BUT all these wonderful social services start to get clawed back from you, raising your effective tax rate even more. In addition, you pay tax on the tax you pay (5% SURtax on tax up to C$12,500 and 8% surtax on taxes in excess of that).
Professionals are leaving the country in droves because of this - the best doctors left long ago, exascerbating the health care crisis (and why not? - the government pays them per procedure regardless of how good they are).
In Liberty, Rene
Ain't that the truth.
Methinks it's anger that I no longer subsidize this person's education that causes him to resent my position.
Oh, and the "highest standard of living stuff"? That's according to criteria established by socialists (i.e. not how good health case is, but how cheap it is, etc.).
In Liberty, Rene
Wouldn't the classic Canadian response be a tax on Internet connections to subsidise postal mail or something like that?
Is Bell Canada an AT&T offshoot, or a branch of the Canadian government?
Just wondering...
I for one miss hardcopy letters. Getting an envelope out of the mailbox, examining the stamp and cancellation, slicing open the envelope, unfolding the letter, noting the kind of pen and paper used, and then finally reading the content was very enjoyable.
The sending side was always harder (which is why letters are almost dead), but the feeling of having put pen to paper was also enjoyable.
I don't think I have received a personal letter in five years now, since a friend of mine returned from remote central Africa. Too bad.
sPh
The French Post office is studying wheter or not it will give every French Citizen an E-mail
Then it will forward the mail via snail.
none Yet.
I'm glad to see that they're putting that postal increase to good use.
Actually it is pretty good. In terms of delivery times it is supposed to be better then the USPS except for the Saturday delivery thing. Compared to European services it is pretty ammazing, as is the USPS. Canada has provinces larger then most European countries, and it still takes only 2-4 days to send a letter to about 99% of the conutry.
It does have big problems though. The union and management boses hate each other immensely. A colleague of mine once worked at Canada Post and said that it was the most hositle and worst environment he has ever worked in.
I once stood in line for an hour and twenty minutes, making "ahem" sounds while this old guy was reading a copy of Macleans at the counter. I had a pile of 60 cards to mail for my grandfather (it was just before last christmas) and was ignored. I say privatize the post office, then we'll see if people think it's worth saving.
Oh, and death to Shiella Copps, BTW, you competition-fearing crap-culture fanatic.
-- SG
In the UK, the Royal Mail has been running two similar campaigns for about a year now. "Everyone responeds to a letter", aimed at businesses, and "what would you send?", aimed at individuals. I don't know how successful they've been, but apparently, the volume of snail mail in the UK has kept on growing over the past few years.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
What was it a whole $0.02 extra? Well I would guess that inflation hits the Post office just like everyone else. Guess what gas costs more than last year. As do computers, paying wages etc.
Actually, gas costs less this year. Lots of extra oil, you know? Last I heard, the price of computers what going down, too...
-matt
---
Wha? TV & Movie Theme Songs? Oh yeah....
You think that's bad?
A couple months ago (long before the x-mess rush) I placed two seperate orders at Amazon.com. One was for DVDs (ordered on a Sunday) and the other for two books (ordered the Friday before).
From another company, I ordered a PlayStation game the Tuesday immediately after. It was shipped US Priority Mail.
Amazon, in its efforts to be "nice," gave me a "complimentary upgrade" from UPS ground to US Priority Mail for the books. Both orders actually shipped Monday. The game shipped Wednesday.
The DVDs arrived that Thursday. The game arrived Saturday. The books finally arrived *NEXT* Wednesday.
So not only was UPS more than twice as fast, but an order placed and shipped *after* another arrived *EARLIER* than the first USPS shipment.
*Sigh*. I'll never use USPS again for shipping stuff.
Read my stuff.
Here's a riddle: What have the CBC the CRTC and Canada Post got in common? Nothing!
Canada Post is a crown corporation set up to run the postal system in Canada. It is suffering as a result of the reduced demand for postal mail.
The CBC is a crown corporation that is set up to provide public broadcasting and promote the film and screen industry in Canada. It would be thriving in the information age were it not for constant funding reductions and lame-duck timeslot decisions made by its executives.
The CRTC is a federal commission originally set up to regulate broadcast frequencies in Canada but has had its mandate altered over the years (by our own elected officials) to include Canadian content regulation.
These three entities have nothing in common besides the fact that they are in some way related to the federal government which is, I suspect, the only thing that you don't like about them. As far as not changing to suit the times: Canada Post can't because its mandate is only to distribute mail - do you want to government to extend that to include competing with up-and-coming IT businesses that would put your greasy ass out of work? No, I didn't think so.
The CBC has changed with the times as well as any TV and radio broadcaster can. Its biggest problem is that the material that it chooses to show is not as racy as the stuff that is shown by non-federally-funded broadcasters. As a news broadcaster it is unequalled in the country and, dare I say it, North America.
The CRTC has changed with the times which is probably why you don't like it. Admittedly, some of the views seem outdated but, in reality, they represent the opinions of the majority of Canadians whether you like it or not.
When they are polled about government involvement and taxation, they consistently want the governement to get out of their face. See Angus Reid poll July 1996.
I was, of course, talking about the silent majority that keeps voting in the governments that you would have us believe act against our will - not the majority of people who bother to respond to polls. Since Angus Reid isn't StatsCan people aren't obliged to respond to them.
I hope our American friends don't get the wrong impression and think we like the state running our lives.
Why do you care so much about what the states think of our livestyle?
After all Canada is not Sweden.
After all, if we were we would have the highest per-capita GDP and lowest poverty rates in the world.
Check Enclosed
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
NO.
Take my check, via certified us mail, or do without MY money.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
They're simply trying to save their tenuous, overpaid, underwroked positions.
This is a classic Canadian response to change. Look at the insightful way the CBC, CRTC and Canada Post have responded to change over the years. They'll do anything to protect their pathetic socialized fiefdoms.
: This is a classic Canadian response to change. Look at the insightful way the CBC, CRTC and
: Canada Post have responded to change over the years. They'll do anything to protect their
: pathetic socialized fiefdoms.
Go to FedEx and try to ship that package (or letter) to the North Pole.
Canada Post WILL deliver it.
NOT FedEx.
-- ----------------------------------------------
Vive le logiciel... Libre!!!
In today's world, no one is going to choose a substandard service to a superior one. Email is fast, cheap and reliable; and here the Post Office just increased the cost of stamps??? For what? What added service do they provide for the extra money? None.
Pretty soon everyone will have an email connection. God knows, with the Democrats in the office any thing else will be discrimination against the poor so email will be subsidized like 'universal' telephone service. At that point, the P. O. will be reduced to a gummint version of FedEx, the U. S. Parcel Service, and that will be the end of it.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
What was it a whole $0.02 extra? Yes, that's about right. $0.02 for each and every bill and letter anyone anywhere sends. That's a 6% cost increase. But we don't see any service improvement for that. (at least the $450 screwdrivers got us a B2 bomber. :) ) That money goes to subsidize the 'bulk rate' mailings from credit card companies, Wal-Mart fliers, and GASP!! political re-election funds... Personally, I'd rather make THEM pay MORE, so I would get less junk.
Gas is actually cheaper this year, and it's a state issue, not a federal one. If I go just over the state line, I pay $0.14 less on the gallon. Computers are considerably cheaper this year than last year. The SAME letter costs 2 cents more, but an equivalent computer costs $1200 less, 50% cheaper!
US post office gets something like a 99.9% reliability rating So? It was as reliable last year, and the year before. If my proverbial two cents actually buy me something new, sure, I'll pay it. Those self-stick stamps are a nice improvement, and if those cost more than the lickable ones, that I'd think about. If the P.O. were to open an ISP that would let me pay bills from home for $0.33 per transaction, I might consider it. But as it stands, all those two cents amount to is a cost of living increase for slow, rude staff. (maybe it's just in my little provincial corner of the world - elsewhere it's a very reputable career, right?)
True, they will deliver to the middle of nowhere, and that is the only redeeming quality of the P.O.Service, AFAIC. Well, at least they don't charge us TAX on stamps yet.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Actually, several of the people who responded got it right only technically.
Bell Canada was (in many ways still is) a regulated monopoly. Just as AT&T ("Bell Telephone" until the break-up) in the U.S. was a heavily-regulated company with a monopoly position, Bell Canada has an iron lock (until the near future) on local telephone service. And, for years, it controlled all phones.
In this sense, they were a branch of the government of the day: they had to do what they were told, or risk reprisals from the policy makers.
The sad thing is that now, both in the U.S. and in Canada, we've given in: we have what were effectively government-provided monopoly positions "deregulated". All this does is to enrich the new self-proclaimed "entrepreneurs". These are people who were (yesterday!) simple bureaucrats; but now, they get to lecture us all on our lax ways. How nice for them that they can afford to be lax.
I would definatly use UPS/FedEx for any kind of packages (not letters though, email there). I've never had any packages get lost or delayed through UPS or FedEx, but a large portion of my USPS mail never makes it here, or makes it here over a week late.
My site contains 100% GPL'd source code
mcox.com - Useful Information re: IT, Running, Fitness, Finance, or Ann Arbor!
"I bet post will be obsolete by 2010"
Companies spend billions mailing out bills,
statements and reports that could be sent
electronically at a fraction of the cost.
Do you think this will change gradually over
a decade or could it happen much faster?
For example suppose someone offered an incentive
program where you got $0.25 credited to your
ISP account for each item you accepted
electronically instead of by mail.
This could take away a big part of the postal system's bread and butter revenue in a short time.
It would be forced to raise rates and/or cut services which would drive away more customers.
why doesn't this article show up on the main page?
what gives?
I guess they have environment friendly envelopes :)
I wish I lived in Canada. I would have LOVED to see that episoide.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
actually i have recieved a couple of pieces of email from nwt! i have a personal straw bale site that generates about an email a week - so was quite surprised. spoke to the guy and they are quite qired, was pleasently surprised.
cdn mail is 46cents for a regular letter.
i do my bill paying online - no more bank machines or mailing them in. i can also set dates to have the payment go thru and can even set it to repeat on any day of the month. only uses 128bit encryption. ya.
The US postoffice is ripe to die off as well. With the way that stamp prices keep increasing, why should someone use snail-mail when email is not going to have postage rates, and gets there faster without the unhappy carrier? Plus, I don't think too many email admins are going to come to work with a machine gun because they're upset about zip codes.
With ever-increasing postal rates, too-common Postal strikes and very poor service, is it any wonder that people who have alternatives choose to use them? We will always be forced to use the postal service for certain services, but now for other services, we have choices. This recent advertising campaign only serves to remind me of the reasons I prefer to use email and courier services (i.e. speed, reliability) rather than Canada Post!
"Arrr! The laws of science be a harsh mistress." -- Bender
I actually agree with Canada Post on one thing: email is less personal.
However, the service level of Canada Post is really dismal, despite the use of such high-tech techniques as postal codes and scan codes. Such is a big disappointment to people used to good postal service such as that found in Hong Kong...
we await silent tristero's empire? yummy.
-Where the hell is my army of me!