Post office blues

September 03, 2008

A recent blog from Sue Horner of Red Jacket Diaries bemoans the fact that there is no glamour in the air anymore. Airlines feeling the pinch of rising prices seem to have forgotten about flying higher for satisfied customers.

Happily, I am writing this as I enjoy a smooth and friendly Westjet flight from Calgary to London. ( Although, I had to switch planes in Winnipeg, so it remains to be seen if my suitcase will make it or not.) But I digress.

Sue’s entry made me think about another service that has been letting us down in the last few years, and one that I quite frankly would love to give up on altogether. I’m talking about the good old postal service.

Recently, I purchased birthday gifts for my twin nieces. I deliberately thought about the size and weight of the gifts due to the skyrocketing price of postage on parcels. I settled on a pocketbook and a glamour nail set for each. To mail the two packages from Calgary to small town Ontario cost me $24.00. To make matters worse, even though both parcels were sent the same day, they arrived a week apart. (I could have paid twice as much to ensure they were given priority and then maybe they would have arrived together. But I have bills to pay.) And since I had bought both girls the same thing, the surprise was spoiled for my niece who had to wait and wonder if her gift was ever coming at all.

You would think with all of the options we have out there to communicate with one another that Canada Post would try harder.

Every year as I dole out hundreds of dollars on postage for packages, I tell myself that there has to be a better way. I apologized to my sister for the birthday gift screw-up and we decided that from now on, the kids get cards and money. Also, we decided that instead of exchanging gifts between us, we would call each other on our birthdays.

Now that’s personal service.