Canada Post to end urban delivery? … really???

The doorbell just rang. It was a smiling postal worker, delivering a mailing too big for my slot in the door.
Perhaps it is due to the fact that I am a crafts person and work with my hands: I value the hand written. The wonderful school where my children went, the Shambhala School, understands the value of the handwritten. They teach the kids knitting, recorder playing, and finger games, in order to develop the muscles in their little hands, so that they can hold a pen well. Then they teach hand writing; they do not introduce computers until grade 5.

I myself am one of those people that still write letters to friends. I own a fountain pen. When I travel, I send postcards. At the end of every year, I use computer software to create an annual letter with text and images, which I mail out to family and friends. There’s something very satisfying and enjoyable about receiving a letter in the mail, wouldn’t you say?  And here we are at my topic of today: the recent announcement by Canada Post to stop door-to-door delivery in the near future. This news genuinely made me sad.

There is something so basically human about “snail mail”, as they call it. I have found it almost absurd to observe how even the virtual is trying to imitate that same feel by creating flash animations of invitation where you ‘open an envelope’. Perhaps one day it will be like the return of the individually handmade, as for example I make every day, in comparison to the mass-manufactured items of the past century. I wonder what William Morris would say?

This crown corporation said they took this step because they are not profitable. They might examine why that is the case. As a consumer of their services, I can tell you what my ideas are:
I use many different kinds of services to ship and receive items, and –as my company grows- am constantly comparing prices, delivery times and options, and convenience of use.  And I can tell you that, without a doubt, Canada Post has the most complicated and user unfriendly website of any of them. It literally makes me want to pull my hair out every single time I attempt to use it. I can handle a clerk being slow in-store, but an electronic interface? Come on…  It’s slow going to the actual post office, but the fact that it’s even slower when you try to do the work ahead of time online, is simply flabbergasting. Searching their website is similarly frustrating. Something went horribly wrong with their entire web presence.

I want to use the Postal Service. I’m a believer in its importance and validity. I am into slow food, so why not slow mail, as well?
But if you get any kind of specialist in there, and have a look at what improvements could be made to make this company more profitable, one of the first ones would be to make the services more user-friendly. For one, to create an interface that is not frustrating, but easy to use, in fact a pleasure, a delight to use. Create a website where the user can find things they need to find. And a login that is not impossibly difficult to use, more difficult than any financial institution.
There is something profoundly good about the very human relationship between postal carriers and their recipients; preserve that!

 In my mind, the decision by Canada Post to nix their door-to-door delivery, and raise postage rates while they are at it, is another example of thinking small, the kind of profound lack of Big View which -unfortunately- is prevalent in Canada, especially the East Coast.

If you look at wealthy countries, you will see that their postal rates are low. In my native country of Germany, for example, you will notice that until recently, postal rates hadn’t been raised since 1997, and were actually reduced in 2003, with the result of many more people using their services.  Perhaps it is my drive for efficiency that is fuelled by (and fuels) entrepreneurship, which makes me think “Come on … you can do so much better than this!”

It is the same drive for betterment that is profoundly sad at seeing a Canadian Crown Corporation throw away its future like this.

Be glad for every Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Solstice card you receive this season!