Postal Confusion

Canada Post Community Mail Boxes (Source: http://o.canada.com/2012/06/23/can-canada-post-survive/)

I live on an island off the west coast of British Columbia and don’t have door-to-door mail delivery.

Canada Post recently changed the mailboxes where I live. Gone were the battered old green boxes and in their place were new “Superboxes”. The “Superboxes” do have a couple of advantages. Packages that are too big for the individual box can be left in an adjacent larger box with the key left in your mailbox. Thus, you could have one fewer trip to the mailbox to pick up a package. And the boxes are new and shiny.

The problem that I have with the new mail boxes is the required change in how my mail must be addressed. I have a street address, let’s say 123 Main Street. And I have, or rather had a mailing
address. For me, and everyone else on the island, it was comprised of a site letter, a compartment (NOT a box) number, and RR (Rural Route) number. So my mailing address was K44, RR1. Over time I managed to get all of my correspondents to add the K44, RR1 to my mailing address. In some cases they dropped the street address, but that was fine, Canada Post kept telling me that I needed to make sure that my address included the site letter, and compartment and route numbers.

The introduction of the Superboxes means that all mail now needs to be addressed to the street address. One silly and slightly annoying problem is that many people’s new box location is not the same as their compartment location. You could pick an empty compartment and just needed to tell the post mistress the number. I picked a compartment that, while not at the site closest to my house, was between my house and the village. So, I would pass the box on every trip I made from home. Very convenient. But now all of the mail for the five houses on my short street are all delivered to the same set of boxes.

Now my mail is being delivered to the former site “L”. A bit closer to home, but that is not the problem. Canada Post no longer identifies this location as “Site L”, but rather “1633”. And the box
assigned to me is in the 5th set of boxes and is box number 10. So, for ease of use by the post office, my mailing address should be “1633, 5-10”. And in fact that is what has been hand written on some mail that was addressed to the old K44 address.

The implementation of the new mail box system was a bit chaotic with many people ending up with
the wrong keys. (I had the keys for my neighbour’s box.) The changeover was delayed more than once, but eventually many of the bugs were ironed out and we all started getting mail in our new “Superboxes”. But Canada Post didn’t anticipate many problems. There is now one box per address, but what is there are two households sharing one address. Not uncommon on an island with many suites, both legal and “unauthorized”. In addition, there are many people sharing houses. Do they really want their roommates to see all their mail? (Especially since under the old system this could be avoided.)

Many people’s first reaction to change is negative. All they see is the disruption and chaos. In this case Canada Post didn’t do a good job of understanding its customers’ requirements and how they were using the existing system. In addition, there seemed to be limited consultation with the local postal workers.

Much is made of consulting with “stakeholders”, but in this case the obvious need to talk to everyone seems obvious. Unfortunately people in head office thinking they know best, is far too common a situation.