(I'd had dealings with them before, parcels delayed, missing, AWOL, tried to contact them through all the regular channels. To no avail. Some companies really don't want you to contact them, and let's face it, if you ran a business like this you wouldn't want to contact your hostages customers either. Anyways, following a little spree on EBay I'm finding a few of my parcels delayed. So far, 1 arrived on time, one, from the US, due to arrive on the 14th of August, arrives on the 21. And 5 remaining parcels, all ordered from different vendors and different destinations around the world, not one has arrived. Due date was August 21. So maybe it's time for a letter, again...)
Dear Canada Post,
Yeah, so here we are again. I used your service and now I'm wondering what's up. I ordered a total of 7 parcels, one of which arrived within the estimated 3-4 weeks, the other managed to be a week late (from the US! 4 weeks to deliver! That's "Ground" for you, what'd ya do, tie it to a slug?). And 5, all predicted to arrive here from various points in Asia, all a minimum of a week late. If they're coming at all, which I frankly am beginning to doubt.
When I used to work for a magazine in Nelson they'd send me my cheques by post. And because I'm a little financially imprudent I'd always be in a rush, so we'd buy the "guaranteed delivery" option, nearly $10.00, and in 2 months of using the service we only every once had to pay, every other time the cheque was late.
STATISTICS
According to your website, 96% of the time the mail gets through. Probably you count the Nelson story as a "Success", because eventually the cheque did arrive, but in my view if your guaranteeing something and failing to deliver, well, that's a failure. That's the problem with measuring yourself, people tend to overestimate their strengths, companies as well.
"It doesn't look like it's 8 inches long"
- "Measure it from the bottom! From the bottom!"
You see, I tell you this story to illustrate that how what we measure ourselves is often not how others measure us. 7 parcels, 1 arrived on time. 1 arrived a week late (a margin of 33% on a 3 week forecast "outside" delivery date). And 5 haven't arrived at all, and if they do at this point they're already 10 days late, or another 33%. It seems to me you need to update your performance evaluation, to something more vague, like the weather forecast, "Possibility of mail delivery: 14%, possibility of flyers: 87%, possibility of bills: 110%". You could actually do this on TV, get your own channel with a mail forecaster, everything gets on TV nowadays, the old people would love it, they could track their coupons and predict what year they should have mailed their birthday cards to their as yet unborn great grandchildren. I think you'd have a hit on your hands.
No, but really, even if you were hitting this "96%" target (and what a low bar that is, and, no, you're not even coming close.) 96%, I'm sorry to say, might be a great mark for your 8 year old son or daughter to bring home on a math test, but it's actually not a hot statistic in the real world. If a doctor said that he killed 4% of his patients we'd say "Maybe you should do something else". Or sue him. If your waiter or waitress lost or ate or drank 4% of your food or drinks he/she'd be fired in big hurry, Unless she was pretty and worked at Earl's or Moxie's. If airlines lost 4% of their passengers we'd all take the bus. So, sad to say, 96% isn't so hot. TO make matters worse, I think you've made that statistic up. I mean, we know you're not going to annoy or disgruntle your big mail customers, people like Harvey's and McDonald's and Ikea and Home Depot, because they spend millions a year just so they can stuff our mailboxes with rubbish. And even so, they probably print extra flyers knowing the postman's going to stock up on 1/2 price coupons for a Big Mac or Quiznos Sub. So we can presume that 110% of their mail is getting delivered. And since for most people that compromises 75% of the mail, we can now see that your 96% is actually more around 80% of "real mail". Except that I'm pretty sure that no one is stealing my (or anybody elses') bills, and as bills are about 3/4 of my mail your statistic is starting to look a little poor, at best maybe 50% of mail that people want, letters, parcels, etc, is getting where it's supposed to, when it's supposed to. Shit, I'd take 50% right now, I'd be two parcels up. But you're nowhere even close to 50%.
CONTACT US
You know, I actually fell for that one once. After reading through your whole site and reading the BS about how the shipper has to launch a tracking search because it most certainly probably hopefully isn't your fault. And when I'd done all that and submitted the form I never once had a single reply from you. Not once. And I could have phoned, but clearly your agents have no more information than I did, and if I wanted dazed and confused I'd call Shaw Cable about my internet bill. And, finally, there was always the post, paying you yet again to see where you fucked up in the first place, yeah, I could send you a letter, but I'm a little older and wiser and that reply from the North Pole in my father's handwriting isn't going to cut it.
THE TALE OF JENNY LEMMIWINKS
I used to work with a girl in a restaurant named Jenny. She was a waitress and was quite pretty, but it didn't really matter because she was really lazy and she was married. I maybe could have worked with the "Married" bit, but the lazy bit, well, we all have our dealbreakers...
Anyways, Jenny would waitress tables and all the other staff would help her out. They'd run her food and bus her tables and put away cutlery and glasses and the more they did, the less she did. But she liked to talk and so while you were cleaning her tables or taking out her food or bringing drinks to one of her tables she'd follow you around and talk. About her husband, or her child or about what she really wanted to do for a living.
What Jenny really wanted to do was to work for the post office. One day she got a job with the post office and she told us she'd be leaving and we were all pretty sad to see her go.
Well, we weren't really, she was pretty damned lazy and a broken ankle would have been more help during a busy shift but it's what you say. Me, I'd a fired her in a heartbeat but the owner of the restaurant, he liked pretty girls. A lot of restaurants are like that, Earl's or Moxie's for example, they don't give a damn what you know or how you work, they just want you to look good.
Anyways, Jenny came into work one day after an early morning shift at the post office sorting mail and she told us that when she was working that morning someone had come up to her and told her to "quit working so hard, you're making us look bad". When she told us that I just about choked, I mean, Jenny, Jenny who had never properly worked a single hour of a single day in her entire life, being told she was working "too hard".
THIS IS A TRUE STORY!
Probably she's done really well with you, maybe it's even her reading this now, if so, "Hi Jenny, where are my damned packages?".
WHERE DOES IT ALL GO?
Where does it all go? No, really? Does Canada have it's own "Area 51" or Indiana Jones type warehouse that you stockpile mislaid parcels in? Or, as I suspect, as you're reading this right now, in your office, looking at the same-old same-old Picasso's and Van Gogh's and Rembrandt's adorning the walls, all mailed out of the old country for safekeeping by well meaning but poorly informed relatives, the Faberge Egg my great great grandmother Anastasia Nikolaevna sent to me from Russia cracked open in front of you, one half filled with red chocolate M&M's and the other filled with blue peanut M&M's, the 100 Million dollars worth of uncut Siberian diamonds used to fashion a sort of rude chandelier, the cold glittering fire of the diamonds warmed by the amber panels of your room, I feel your impotent pain and frustration...to open my mail or not to...or are they at:
THE CUSTOMS HOUSE
Boy, the stories I hear about them. Like how they only drink single malt whisky and use the rest to flush their toilets and urinals. And about how they only smoke the very best cigars and when they're done butt them out into Lowland Gorilla Paw ashtrays. About how they have a firing range in the basement where they can test out all the illegal firearms brought into the country and how they burn dope like incense and pop the off-brand Viagra's like they were Smarties and then all writhe together naked upon the cloud leopard skin rugs while flakes of the purest cocaine fall like snowflakes from the ceiling ...
It sounds like a fun job. Their Christmas Party must be a riot. Do you swap gifts with them at Christmas?
I'll bet you wish you had their job, but rest assured they probably wish they had yours. It's human nature to want what you haven't got.
I want my parcels.
IN SEARCH OF...
You know, I have another idea. It's for a TV series, kind of like "In Search Of..." - you remember that? Where Leonard Nimoy would use his credibility as the voice of science and reason, hard won through almost 3 seasons of Star Trek, to go off and search for Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster? Except we'd use William Shatner, because Mr. Nimoy is dead and, really, as chief science officer I don't like the odds he'd give me of finding my parcels. I prefer Captain Kirk's can-do attitude, and really, right now he's where it's at. This could be like a filler program on the Mail Channel where you give the forecasts for the possibilities of mail.
Now this would be a good time to involve a psychic. People love shows with psychics at the moment. Psychics and William Shatner, this will be the biggest television show to hit CBC since "Little Mosque on the Prairie". You know, I'm a little bit psychic and I've had some strange visions about what's become of my parcels, but this isn't about me, it's about the show, so we wouldn't use me as your psychic, we'd use a woman, sort of a young-ish hot woman psychic who could be a foil to William Shatner's incredible sexiness. They'd flirt every show. I'd be the guy staying on track and focused on finding my parcels. And we'd all go looking for my parcels together. Don't worry, even if we found it - I'm sure we'll find them, we have William Shatner after all, the show will go on. Maybe in Borneo, with tribes of headhunters and filed teeth, a fine opportunity for Mr. Shatner to lose his shirt and wrestle with the natives. Or maybe on Easter Island, just because. Or maybe on a Somalian Pirate ship. And after we find my parcels (hopefully in the season premiere) we'll field inquiries from the general public as to what's become of their parcels and investigate...
You know, with your current business model this could be the longest running show on earth.
STAMPS
I wish I would have bought some of your now collectible dinosaur provincial park stamps. I wasn't thinking. But, now that I'm waiting for my parcels to arrive, the parcels that are weeks late and not showing any sign of arriving, I've had a few moments to think. Here are some Stamp Ideas for you:
- Canada Post employee killing the last passenger pigeon
- Canada Post harnesses the power of the Black Hole to assist in its mail delivery
- Canada Post employee stealing Santa's cookies
- Dead Turtle/Snail/slug
- Postman kicking a dead horse
The Black Hole idea is probably more of a logo, or re-branding of your company. But you could use it on a stamp as well.
NOW, SERIOUSLY...
Truthfully, I'm surprised that many international sellers will even ship to Canada. I mean, we all know that you seize, censure and forfeit the mail sent to Santa Clause, but I seriously wonder if it's you that's been eating the cookies left out for him as well. Does Santa even get a chance? Thank goodness he doesn't only cover Canada or Coke would have to redesign him to be some sort of flimsy scarecrow...
Now, seriously, 10 days overdue on 5 parcels mailed by 5 different vendors from different cities and countries. Where the fuck are my parcels?!!