Canada Post

    Today I have a bit of a rant about Canada Post (Canada’s postal service).  Canada Post is in trouble because of the ever diminishing amount of mail.  It is so much easier to email someone than to write a letter, so less and less “snail mail” is being generated and Canada Post’s revenue is down. 

    Postal Services used to be just that, a service.  Somewhere down the line, it was decided that Canada Post should not be a service to its citizens, but a self supporting “business” and the government 

made that change.  The fall in mail volume and the adoption of the business model for Canada Post has not been a good combination.  The result seems to have been that the cost of mailing something has really gone up for the consumer.  The more Canada Post raises the price, the less people want to use it.

    This rise in the price of mailing really hit me lately as I have been mailing out calendars to family and friends.  The stack of envelopes you see in the photo cost me $55 to mail yesterday.  Last week I sent out a smaller pile of calendars that cost me $25. 

    Years ago we used to send Christmas presents to family in the US.  It got to the point where the postage cost more than the gift, so we just quit sending presents.  I did continue to send calendars, but the cost for them keeps rising and rising.

    I recently ordered a small  packet of 35 tomato seeds from the US.  The seeds cost me $2.95 but my bill with shipping cost me over $11.  I should have cancelled the transaction,  the shipping is way too expensive.

    The discrepancy of pricing confuses me.  A couple of years ago I bought a snowblower on line.  The machine weighed over 200 pounds and the shipping was free.  How does that work?  Granted the price of shipping was included in the price, but that price was the same across the whole of Canada.  It seems that big heavy things that should cost a whole lot more to ship, get a whole lot cheaper rate than small envelopes.

    A few years ago I found a free used book at a swap shed.  It looked like something my Mom would enjoy so I wrapped it and went to the post office to mail it to her.  I don’t remember how much it was going to cost to mail, but it was more than I was willing to shell out.  There used to be a cheaper “Book Rate”, but like some many other services it has disappeared.

    There, my rant is over and I feel better.

To view my paintings go to:  www.davidmarchant.ca