Although hundreds of thousands of rural Canadians have a box
number address, those of us living in the country are continually refused proper
service by companies and individuals who, for their own arbitrary reasons, have
decided they won’t ship to a box number.
One go-round has been with Staples, who advertise free
shipping on their website. However, when you actually try to place an order, you
discover that ‘Shipping
addresses must have a Canada Post verified street address’. If you
contact Customer Service, you quickly find it is next to impossible to get the
agents to grasp that most farms and acreages out in the country don’t
have street addresses.
Some of the
excuses I routinely get for not mailing to a box number are:
·
The on-line shipping form is not set up for box
numbers
·
Item requires a signature
·
Item is too large to fit in a post box
·
Item isn’t being shipped by Canada Post
·
Street address is required for door-step
delivery
·
Box numbers are not secure
·
Box numbers are suspicious. People have them for
nefarious purposes
In most cases, Customer Service agents (email or telephone) are responding from a prepared script and clearly have no understanding about rural mail delivery. Therefore, in September 2020, I decided to address my concerns with Staples in a written letter to their head office in Ontario. To date, (now July 2021), despite two letters to Customer Service and three more to CEO David Boone, I still have had no reply whatsoever.
In fact, rural mail delivery is much more secure than parcels left on a porch in the city. If a Canada Post parcel does not fit into a rural mail compartment or requires a signature, you get a delivery notice and go to the local post office/agent with identification to collect it. If the item has not been shipped Canada Post, it will go to the appropriate courier depot in the community for pick-up. These include Fed Ex, Purolator, UPS and DHL. You are notified either by the local depot phoning you directly or by an email from the shipper tracking the item. No, the item will not be delivered directly to your door out in the country, but that doesn't mean you can't receive it.
Refusing to provide service to a specific group (rural Canadians in this case) is, by definition, discrimination. I feel any company doing business in Canada should legally be required to deliver to all Canadians at their legitimate address.
That Staples' head office has not responded to five letters speaks volumes as to how the company values our business. They seem to have overlooked the fact that it is many of the people with those pesky box numbers who are actually putting food on their tables!
Inevitably, customer service agents will tell you to "just use a different address". However, as a rural Canadian, my box number is my only mailing address. It is also the address that is on my driver's license, income tax, bank statements etc. I don't have another address and I shouldn't need one!
