Saturday Delivery

If post offices insist on becoming bill-pay centres,they should dedicate one queue for POST OFFICE BUSINESSS! I get riled standing behind people paying bills that can be paid over the net or the phone.

What's really fun is waiting in queue while one of two available clerks (the post office might have 5 or 6 windows but only two of them are ever manned) is working with someone (or more) on their passport application. Fortunately, by printing postage for packages online, I seldom need to get to the post office anymore since such packages need not be presented to a clerk (even if they weigh more than one pound) and are routinely picked up by our mail carrier.

I stand in the queue to buy those silly bits of paper (when I can), to register packages and have my outgoing item hand-cancelled. Of course, I wait 15 minutes while Auntie Flo is paying her power bill.......

so you have a biff with auntie flo then?

I have been known to urge these recalcitrants to shuffle faster.

have you seen rod lately? the last we heard he was building a beast. hopefully the best wasnt hungry after he got built.

Helllo Puzzler: there is no minimum charge on expedited parcels. And if you do any shipping at all you want a venture card: automatic discount and $100 insurance / tracking.

Afternoon Ryan: I think there will always be a delivery service and there will always be a way of recoding payment - a copy of which will be affixed to the item being delivered. I'm a little surprised that philately has not advanced fully into meter mail, labels, and other detrius of postal / commercial shipping. Look at ink jet cancelling for example. There are curiousities and even errors (forgetting to turn off the cancel test pattern) - but hardly anyone into that. UPS is, as I recall, a Canada Post courier service but nobody collects UPS labels. I'd argue that if we want philately to remain viable we need to adapt to the times.

For those who are interested in ink jet cancels, note that there is a healthy interest in Canada for such things. The Machine Cancel Study Group has a page that includes some copies of previous newsletters. I don't know if the group is still active or not, the newsletters stop at 2002.

http://www.charleslivermore.com/machinecancels/

The British North America Philatelic Society has also published a reference work on Canadian ink jet cancels - this page doesn't have any HTML anchors to go directly to the book concerned, so you'll have to scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page to find the book titled "Canada Inkjet (Jet Spray) Cancels 1992-2005" by Joel Weiner.

http://www.bnaps.org/reviews/notes2006.htm

Ryan

Hi Moonbird,

Sorry, I got carried away with quoting prices and wasn't specific enough.

I just checked how much to ship a very small-sized parcel of small weight to an address 2 miles from me in Halifax = $8.76.

Even with using a Venture One card's 5% discount (which I have and sometimes forget to use!) it is still $8.32, including fuel surcharge and 13% taxes, using CP's online calculator. ebay does have a discount when using their electronic system with Expedited parcels of 25% so 8.76 x .75 = $6.57. Which is OK.

But if you do not use ebay and do not have a Venture One card the cost sometimes seems excessive. Maybe I am behind on my understanding of what things cost nowadays.

If Canada Post is charging this much, albeit with a smaller population to service, then perhaps the USPS may have this type of rate increase in their future?

i can barely afford the doctor how will we ever afford the rate increase

I just heard on the TV, that in some of our newer suburbs, when they open up a new sub division, they will not be doing any postal deliveries. Instead the Post office will send an SMS when you have mail and people will be expected to go the the local postal hub and pick up their mail. This is only a trial, I believe and personally I don't expect it to survive.

Steve

Steve, for real? This sounds like April Fools, but it's well past that... so, now you'll be required to register your cell phone with the post office?

-Allen

I just want to scream. It's a b****y POST OFFICE. Would it be at all possible for them to deliver the b****y post????

Allen, that's a good point. What about those people that don't have mobile phones.

What ever happened to, "through rain or snow or hail, we will deliver the mail"?

Not to mention the increase in green house gases from exhaust. Instead of a 100cc motorcycle delivering the mail, now the have hundreds of people driving there cars to the post office.
What about the old and infirmed people that struggle to get to their mail box, let alone to the post office?

Like I said, I doubt that it will last.

Steve