Now is the time to draw inspiration from wherever we can, and stand with workers while they fight the employer-led race to the bottom.

Now is the time to draw inspiration from wherever we can, and stand with workers while they fight the employer-led race to the bottom.

I agree with all those points. Door to door mail delivery was a postwar job creation program in USA as far as I know, maybe it’s the same for Canada, but it is a luxury unless it’s super high density.

I have a recycling bin next to my mailbox. Almost everything goes in there. I can check it once a week.

Any solutions as to how NOT to lose $1,000,000 per day?
Didn’t think so. Let’s keep delvering junk mail door-to-door!

Why is nobody clueing in that if Canada Post goes under we’re all gonna be stuck getting our legal documents and important mail via severely underpaid and over worked amazon delivery drivers!?

You get what you pay for. The short sightedness of all this is astounding.

It is a luxury, but I don’t think we’re wrong to want luxuries. I think the frequency issue is intentionally disregarded. And it shouldn’t be. I’d rather have weekly delivery to my door than daily to a community mailbox. But what I’d really like is choice. What if we had both a community mailbox and weekly door-to-door delivery? Need something urgently, pick it up at the community mailbox where it gets dropped off daily, but if you’re not religiously emptying your community mailbox, a postman still comes by once a week to deliver any mail from your community mailbox to your home?

I suspect this could potentially save a lot of money AND provide actually better service to the significant majority of people. To the point that we could even start expanding door-to-door delivery again instead of removing it, we’d just expand it to areas that currently only have community mailboxes but do it on a reduced frequency, like garbage and recycling services. If they can do it weekly in most places, why can’t the postal service?

If i have to travel to get my mail, i’ll probably never see my mail.

Sell public-option banking and cell phone services at post office branches and you’d turn instant profit. Bigger branches could also carry dry grocery goods. There is so much more they could be doing other than trying to out-Bezos the mail.

Most people don’t even get door to door delivery it is a luxury for a small percentage of people. Why does a small percentage get special treatment? Because they have always had it? That’s not a valid reason.

How much money is the military losing per day? As far as I can tell they aren’t bringing in any income at all!

Sell public-option banking and cell phone services at post office branches and you’d turn instant profit. Bigger branches could also carry dry grocery goods. There is so much more they could be doing other than trying to out-Bezos the mail.

Mail services are, in my opinion, a worthwhile endeavour. People in remote parts of the country deserve to be able to get their bills on paper too.

It’s when they’re considered to be a standalone, for-profit corporation that problems really crop up. Especially when they’re competing with and for Amazon’s race to the bottom delivery rates.

I say this as someone who resolutely avoids electronic billing. It’s a FANTASTIC way for my ADHD brain to forget about bills until the power is cut off.

ETA Germany sold off Deutsche Post but that’s a terrible example because Germany doesn’t have 90% of its population on 10% of the land mass and still need to serve that 10% population.

Most people don’t even get door to door delivery it is a luxury for a small percentage of people. Why does a small percentage get special treatment? Because they have always had it? That’s not a valid reason.

I don’t really agree that you have the right to paper bills. It’s a waste all around and should be subject to additional fees. We live in a digital age, time to adapt.

I do think that remote areas deserve to receive mail for other purposes, but bills aren’t one of those.

I understand why you say it’s an environmental waste, and that has some merit, until we consider the impact of junk mail, flyers, etc. There are many areas of modern society we can economize and improve upon before we get to the impact from paper billing.

What is your alternative to a pile of paper on a desk? It needs to be persistent, timely, and reliable. Online billing portals mean I need to log in on a regular basis to multiple portals in order to check for notifications and invoices, which simply doesn’t work for my brain. Having a bill sitting out, on which I am able to write the payment amount and date, permits me to keep track of the bill throughout its lifecycle at a glance from across the room.

I understand why you say it’s an environmental waste, and that has some merit, until we consider the impact of junk mail, flyers, etc. There are many areas of modern society we can economize and improve upon before we get to the impact from paper billing.

What is your alternative to a pile of paper on a desk? It needs to be persistent, timely, and reliable. Online billing portals mean I need to log in on a regular basis to multiple portals in order to check for notifications and invoices, which simply doesn’t work for my brain. Having a bill sitting out, on which I am able to write the payment amount and date, permits me to keep track of the bill throughout its lifecycle at a glance from across the room.

Any solutions as to how NOT to lose $1,000,000 per day?
Didn’t think so. Let’s keep delvering junk mail door-to-door!

I don’t see why we can’t designate door-to-door mailing in sparsely populated areas and community mailboxes in more crowded places? Wouldn’t that save quite some money while still ensuring that people don’t have to spend ridiculous amounts of time to get their mail? I’d imagine that in more crowded places, because things are a bit more down in scale, people wouldn’t have to drive 20 minutes just to get their mail, and it would generally be a 5 minute walk.

We can do something more creative too. If there’s a nearby cafe or something, make that the community mailbox and people can grab their mail and have coffee. Your parcels would be away from the elements, and the cafe can become sort of a 3rd place. It’s more efficient land use!

We can also make community mailboxes have the ability to notify the people whenever there’s something in the mail, and people can subscribe to that system if they wish to (not everyone wants or can use digital ways of getting information). That way, it’s more difficult for people to forget about their mail. There definitely is a development cost and ongoing maintenance cost, but hey, it’s an option.

For those in sparsely populated areas, nothing much would change, if any. I think they could still have community mailboxes and just opt into it if it fits their lifestyle (eg, they choose to head out to the mailbox every Tues and Fri, for example). They can change their delivery option by going online or just visit a library or somewhere they can get a person to help them change their setting.

Is that a bit more work for postal workers to have to separate mail? It could be, but perhaps we could append some kind of token to the address to clearly distinguish door-to-door vs community mailboxes, making it easier to verify by eye, and also easier to automatically separate via a scanner if needed. Heck, could we just plaster a QR code to mail?

For those who changed their option, you might still get mail either in your community mailbox or your own mailbox, depending on what you’ve switched to.

Just spitballing here. There’s a lot you can argue about each idea, but there are many things we can do to be more efficient, make it less painful for our postal workers but also save out on cost.