Canada Post customer requests apology, free stamp, over snowed-in mailbox

Got mail?

Ted Boothroyd didn't get any last week.

The Fredericton resident, who lives in the Rosewood subdivision, said the public mailbox was hidden behind a large snowbank, making it impossible for customers to retrieve their mail for almost a week.

• Canada Post criticized for poor snow removal around mailboxes

"You could not argue with it," he said. "You could not get through.

"Obviously, the people who normally deliver the mail could not get through either."

Boothroydfirst went to get his mail onNew Year's Day and founda pile of snow in front of the mailbox.

Initially,Boothroyd wasn't surprised because of the storm the night before.

Days gone by

He continued to check his mailbox every day and continued to find it obscured by snow.

By Wednesday, the Canada Post customer received a parcel at his front door, but he still couldn't get through to the local mailbox, half of which was under snow.

Customers who could get their mail had to climb a 45-centimetre snowbank to retrieve it.

We were flabbergasted.- Ted Boothroyd

"We knew there was movement of mail somewhere," he said in an interview with Information Morning Fredericton.

On Friday afternoon, he took another jaunt over to the local mailbox. To his dismay, the snow still wasn't cleared.

By then, someone had dug a trench through the pile of snow to getto the public mailboxes.

"We went on the first day, saying, 'Well this isn't normal,' second day, 'Aw come on, this is unusual,' third day, 'Whoa! This is just ridiculous.' Friday still not cleared, we were flabbergasted."

The snow wasn't cleared until Saturday.

He said anyone who mailed something after pickup on Dec. 30 would not have had itpicked up until Jan. 9 at the earliest.

Canada Post is responsible for clearing snow around community mailboxes. The Crown corporation uses local contractors to clear the area andapplysalt or sand based on the weather when needed.

Jon Hamilton, a Canada Post spokesman, said the organization has teams across the country that do a good job removing snow, but sometimes a local contractor can fall behind.

"That's clearly a problem," he said.

In this case, all the mail was delivered to the community mailbox on Monday.

"We've also talked to the contractor to ensure they're ready, and they have the proper equipment to get out a lot faster the next time the snow hits," Hamilton said.

Canada Post, which has about five million addresses across the country that use community mailboxes, also relies on customers to report issues such as this one.

No apology

During the upheaval, Boothroyd said, the community did not receive any word from Canada Post.

Boothroyd, who has experienced the same problem in the past, said he would like an apology from Canada Post. Even a free stamp would be nice.

But more important, he doesn't want the interruption to happen again.

"An apology would be nice and some sort of explanation of what went wrong and some sort of, swear-on-the-Bible that it'll never happen again," he said. "I would be satisfied to have [the system] working."

To commemorate his Canada Post experience, Boothroyd wrote a poem called The Saga of the Missing Mail.

The Saga of the Missing Mail

It may shock you to hear my tale,
My saga of some missing mail,
But don't freak out and don't go pale,
Just listen up to this portrayal
Of one whole week of unseen mail.

I won't exaggerate the scale
Of what's not there, it's only mail.
No, we're not talking Holy Grail;
It's mostly flyers shouting "Sale"
That keep not coming through the mail.

Was there a storm, you ask, with hail
Sufficient to forestall the mail?
Or surely someone's on the trail;
Is no-one tramping hill and dale
In desperate search of bits of mail?

Are Posties fighting tooth and nail
Against some vicious thief of mail?
Perhaps our postal gal's in jail
But short of funds to pay the bail
Still clinging to her bags of mail.

To all of those the answer's "no,"
The problem's just a bank of snow
That started off all soft and low,
But we know banks of snow: they grow
That's no surprise, that's status quo!

Try not to weep and please don't wail
About our week-long missing mail.
(Besides, by now it must be stale.)
But do feel free to mark a "fail"
To those responsible for mail.