If you live in St. Jacobs, you’d better pick up that parcel a day early: Saturday service will be shutting down at the St. Jacobs post office. Effective January 12, the 1404 King St. N. venue will end its regular Saturday service hours of 9 a.m. to noon.
“People will have to get their mail during the week – it won’t be available on Saturdays,” said Canada Post spokesperson Eugene Knapik. “With lettermail volumes declining, we’re reviewing our whole network, and we’ve got to make some smart business choices in order to maintain local service.”
He continued, “Our goal is to serve the people in the community when they use the post office most, and our reviews determined that we don’t have many customers on Saturdays. It’s not effective for us to continue to operate on the Saturdays, so we’ve made the business decision.”
No changes are imminent for the St. Jacobs post office’s regular weekday hours, currently 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday to Friday.
The service changes come as part of a spate of cuts to Canada Post, such as the proposed elimination of direct mail delivery to more than five million households and small businesses.
“We’ve been reviewing our network of post offices across the country, and the way Canadians are using Canada Post is changing,” said Knapick. “We’re trying to adjust to those changes, and we can’t keep parts of the retail network open when we just don’t have the customers to justify it.”
Over the next five years, the one third of Canadian households that receive their mail at their door will be converted to community mailbox delivery, a major cost-saving move for a money-losing Canada Post. The Crown agency expects to reduce its workforce of 55,000 by 6,000 to 8,000 employees, largely by attrition.
On the revenue side, Canada Post is boosting the prices of a single stamp to $1 as of Mar. 31, 2014, a hike of 59 per cent over the current rate of $0.63. If bought in a pack, the stamps will be $0.85, an increase of 35 per cent.
The average Canadian household purchases fewer than two stamps per month, according to Canada Post.
