Quite possibly the stupidest letter I have ever gotten.

Yes... please deluge me with crap...

Wow, what an opportunity ! Hope I get one of these.

I can't help but feel there's a connection to that thread about 'community' mailboxes I had going previously.

If I find unaddressed mail in my mail box, I know there has been a delivery and I don't need to check it again. An empty mailbox tells me nothing and I'll keep checking it - especially as mail often appears to be delivered sometime in the evening.

As for this particular letter, what if you'd had a change of mind? Or the "no flyer" notice was put there by a previous occupant? I think it's nice they gave you the opportunity. You can just ignore it if you want to carry on.

On a separate note, does it actually work? There's a house up the street that has something similar but I still see the bag of flyers on the steps.

Our proper flyers come with the daily paper to the mailbox. That's how I like it.

I think those bags of flyers are delivered by a separate company, or they are in my area at least. You would think they'd respect a 'no flyer' notice too but who knows.

My husband (postman) mentioned CP had sent these letters. The staff in his post office were not told about it and he actually had to ask the householders to tell him what the letter is about. Have you ever heard something so utterly stupid? Here, deliver this letter but we're not going to bother telling you what it's about so that you can address any concerns your clients have. Genius.

Anyway, as ever with CP, just bear in mind that most of the stupidity comes from the top down.

I have a mailbox in a bank of boxes at the top of our road. It also has a postbox attached for sending mail.

I open my mailbox and re-post any crap unaddressed post to CP.

Don't see why I should recycle it. If unaddressed tome, then I'll unaddressed it back at them

I wonder what Canada Post's mailing rates would be without the income this generates for them.

I'd say about 90% of my mail is flyers and junk mail.

Might mock up one of these "no flyers" efforts. My mailbox is one of those "public" sorts that sit at the side of the road rather than attached to my house. Assuming there aren't "different rules" for these?

The local CBC Radio 1 lunchtime programme here had a phone in with the PR guy from Canada Post on "How can we make CP profitable". Apparently they are losing a ton of money because amazingly enough no-one sends letters anymore. So you need to accept junk mail to keep the essential service of Canada Post going. Think of it as your civic duty.

snap!

It's quite depressing they can't figure out that by offering cheaper parcel mail rates they would make up the difference with more ecommerce use.

All new mailboxes for quite awhile have been of this type, you just stick a notice in there saying you don't want any flyers, they have to respect it. One of the better things about Canada imo because that trick doesn't work in the US.

There's so much junk mail, your in danger of not noticing something actually important, and throwing it out!

I doubt it, they're in competition with UPS and Purolator/DHL.

Have a look at the Fedex rate for delivering on a Saturday in Canada and a Saturday in the US (where they have Saturday delivery).

Pretty clearly Canada Post is delivering parcels at a competitive rate if that is anything to go by.

The USPS is massively in debt to the US Treasury, plus in the US you can avoid sales tax if you buy carefully from out-of-State.

The Govt. here isn't going to subsidize Canada Post to that extent and you can't avoid sales tax here either, so I doubt e-commerce will ever take off to the same extent as it has in the US or Europe.

Which is not a bad thing imv, at least in Canada there is a level playing field, instead of, e.g. Amazon UK avoiding VAT by having a warehouse in Jersey.

It's going to be quite a shock to people in the US when the Marketplace Fairness Act comes into force: http://www.marketplacefairness.org

Amazon has set up local warehouses and is apparently going to have their own carrier in most locations.

You are not the only one, apparently CP sent out 950,000 - they are paid to deliver junk mail and so are campaigning to stop the 'no junk mail' stickers.

So is USPS and Royal Mail... ?

Not really, both FedEx and UPS offer discounted rates to businesses. I ordered a PC Keyboard online recently from hookbag.ca - the postage was only $5.50, and that was with UPS. I ordered some laundry soap from a company that used CanadaPost, and that was $8, for a smaller lighter box. I don't understand what Saturday rates really have to do with it, I don't care about getting stuff on a Saturday.

If CanadaPost was reasonable with their pricing, more people and businesses would use them, but right now they're becoming like CBC and other Government associated companies, something that lurks in the background sucking money but providing very mediocre service that is not good value for money.

At Christmas the parking lot at the Blaine, WA USPS post office is BC plates everywhere. CanadaPost are losing a lot of money there as well, if their rates to the US were more reasonable again more people would use them. Adding tracking also hugely inflates the price as well, they wanted $35 to post a tracked letter to the US! With FedEx ground it was around $16!

Only because the Senate forced them to pay all their retirement and workers benefits upfront, that would put any company into debt. USPS is actually on track to start producing $2B profit annually by 2017, if they are given the autonomy they are currently asking for.

In any case, just because CP doesn't have losses doesn't excuse it's exuberant rates that are completely unreasonable. It could be making more money by more accessible affordable rates.

That actually doesn't really make much of an impact to me a lot of the time. Since Amazon.com's main warehouse is in Washington state I usually have to pay Washington sales tax. But often the items are the same price in Canada on online stores, but the postage is what kills it. It's also what killed eBay in Canada since those business discount rates from FedEx/UPS/CP aren't available to everyone.

I agree, but I don't think sales tax has much to do with it. Every time I bought stuff online in the UK it often included VAT, but the postage rate was more reasonable

Their own carrier? That's interesting. I hadn't heard about that. But as I said above it is rarely the sales tax that causes the problem for me, but perhaps it will effect others.