Canada Post Announces the End of Urban Home Delivery 226
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."
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:5, Insightful)
9/10 of everything I get local delivered is a sales pitch to "Current Resident".
Exactly. Those guys, by sheer volume, are the ones paying enough money to keep the lights on at the post office. If they raise that rate too much, then advertisers will just find another, more cost-effective medium and the price of your Christmas card to grandma will go up to about $3, or maybe even more.
As unfortunate as it is, that crapmail is what is subsidizing the rest of the traditional government-chartered snail mail industry. And sorting through all the crapmail is the price (no pun intended) we pay for sending letters for less than the $8-$12 FedEx will charge you for a letter-size envelope at their slowest delivery pace.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
The anti-Harperites are generally not anti-government. They just want the NDP in charge.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they raise that rate too much, then advertisers will just find another, more cost-effective medium and the price of your Christmas card to grandma will go up to about $3, or maybe even more.
Sounds good! I sent, maybe, two paper letters last year. I would be delighted to eliminate all junk mail from my mailbox for only $6.
Re:Slightly misleading. (Score:3, Insightful)
How is that interesting? Most union shops hold their employer to ransom to the point where it's almost uneconomical to run the business. You can see examples of this all the time like how the already best paid airline maintenance teams in Australia decided to go on strike because the Airline didn't agree to their exorbitant pay rise demands.
It would be more interesting if a union agreed to some reasonable terms for a chance.