Friday, January 28, 2011

La Poste, Canada Post and USPS

La Poste, the French Post Office, and Canada Post, the Canadian one, do not seem to have major financial problems.

La Poste (a public company owned by the French state) has a reasonably large number of establishments all over the country. La Poste is also a bank (La Banque Postale) so this contributes to its financial success.

In Canada, most postal outlets are in privately owned shops, such as 7-Elevens. There are quite a few of those, so, at least in urban areas, you are never very far from the postal outlet where you get your packages/registered mail when the letter carrier does not find you at home. This contributes to the good level of service of Canada Post.

Incidentally, the mail is not distributed everywhere in Canada. I own a house in an unincorporated area in British Columbia, and there is no mail distribution there, and thus no postal code. To get your mail, you need to have a P.O. box at the near Post Office. The P.O. box is free if this is your main residence and prohibitively expensive if this is a secondary residence.

Here, in Miami-Dade county, the near Post Office is 5 kilometers (3.2 miles) from where I live. To go get a package, you need to take your car and spend the better part of an hour.

Also, in the apartment complex where we live, if a package is too large to fit in your mail box, the letter carrier put it in a bigger box and put the key to this bigger box in your mail box. Except, when there are no bigger box available. Then, you need to go get your package at the Post Office, 5 km away. There is no attempt by the letter carrier to knock on your door to deliver the package.

From what I hear, USPS is in dire straits. I am not really surprised.

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