I have a story about our local “reliable” postal service. Yes, the same one we are taxed on.

In mid-January I did some online shopping. I had done it before with the same company with favourable results. I had a tracking number and so thought everything to be okay.

According to the Canada Post website tracker, my parcel was delivered successfully on January 28. I did not receive it. I checked with the post office a few days later. They looked but could not find it.

Well, to make things easier for everyone, Canada Post decided to place a key into your post office  box. You retrieve your own parcel from the larger box. Well, someone else got my key. This person decided to keep my parcel – a ring . . . a gift for my daughter for her birthday.

The post office would do nothing except to direct me to phone customer service. I talked to someone miles and miles from here. He told me to put in a claim to the company I ordered it from,  then they would conduct an investigation.

Well, I tried to make that claim to the company I ordered from, but just my luck the website was down and still is. Bankrupt? I don’t know but the Better Business Bureau is aware.

I tried my own brand of justice. To appeal to the neighbour who thieved from me, a notice placed at my own mail box. But Canada Post kept removing it.

I subsequently found a mail key (meant for someone else),  just lying  on the ground. I could have kept that key. I could have kept that parcel. I could have checked every day, kept every parcel intended for someone else.

But I would not do that! I know someone is waiting for that package sent from somewhere. All it takes is for the carrier to make a human mistake and place that key in the wrong box, and of course one dishonest neighbour.

Again I’ve received someone else’s mail. The address is almost the same as mine.

It  will keep on happening. Should I? Could I?  Change my address? Or be there while my mail is being delivered? Or just hope that what goes around comes around and that the person wearing my daughter’s birthstone now has a green finger.

Diane Young, Oliver