Not Santa-style delivery

It is Christmas (almost). Every post office you go to has a pile of boxes on the counter and an even bigger pile of boxes in the back room.

Our mail boxes are stuffed with notices to go pick up the boxes as soon as possible and I can imagine why. There is a vast amount of cardboard heading to landfills around B.C. at the moment.

When I order online, I always assume when I pay for “delivery to my door” — a contract I am not involved in, since it is between the shipper and the courier company — that I will in fact get a parcel to my door.

It never has been the case with Purolater. The company is largely owned by Canada Post (91 per cent) and to a lesser extent, Kelowna businessman Barry Lapointe (seven per cent). Why our government ever felt it should buy a private courier company, goodness only knows.

Frankly, some good old bureaucratic management is at play — not unlike a nationalized corporation such as Canada Post.

When I lived in Peachland, Purolater was the only company that would not deliver to my door — despite the contract that I agreed to with my supplier.

According to them, I was out of their service area, so why did they agree to do a door-to-door delivery in the first place? The illogical rationale always ticked me off.

If they drove up the Connector and turned left at the Trepanier interchange, they would drive for two kilometres to deliver parcels.

However, turning right and driving one kilometre was out of the service area. Computer program? Administrator in a black suit and tie? Idiot? Who knows? But I thought it would be over when I moved to Kaslo.

Sadly, that was not the case. This Christmas season, I have parcels coming from various parts of the continent. After tracking one of the parcels and seeing projected delivery dates, I was excited. I was even more excited when a local company called me to ask if I would be around on Friday so they could deliver. 

Then Friday came. I received another call. “Where would I like my parcel delivered?" 

My obvious reply was to my house. Apparently that was not an option.

My options were Nelson, a two-hour winter round drive or Balfour, a one-hour winter round drive. Frankly, if I had a private plane, I would rather fly to the provider and pick it up personally.

So here is my thought!

As the company falls into lazy and unproductive habits like “partially delivering parcels to your door” and becomes less consumer centric, disruptors will erase them from the face of the planet.

I am pretty sure I am not the only person who is ticked off by the call from Purolater suggesting my door-to-door delivery is ready to pick up — 80 km away.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.