The Mail Box Saga.....

We have community mail boxes, as Canada Post does not deliver directly to your home.  Ours is just down the road from us, so very convenient.

The builder put very nice hard and landscaping around the boxes.  On the other side of the wall is a stone seating area and it looks over one of the golf course holes.

As we are a condominium the boxes themselves are not owned by Canada Post, but by the condominium corp.  This is where the saga begins.

If you look carefully at the photo there are a bank of smaller mail boxes that you access by a key.  Those are the home owner's mail boxes and the homeowner is responsible for the lock on them. 

On the left of each unit it a hole around half way down, that is the key hole that Canada Post use to open the front of the unit.  That is Canada Post's responsibility.

You will then notice on the right hand side unit there are two large boxes; that is where Canada Post puts small parcels and then pops a key in your box for you to open and collect your parcel.  You then put the key back in the mail to go out slot on the top.

Are you following so far?  I told you this is a saga!  There are locks owned by the homeowner and locks owned by Canada Post, but who owns the locks for the parcel boxes???  That is the million dollar question.

I spoke to our mail lady as I had a parcel delivered and she put it in one of the parcel boxes and due to the lock being rusty I had a heck of a job opening the lock.  Once Winter comes things are only going to get worse.  She explained all the above information and suggested I talk to the property management company and she would meet them at the boxes and she would open all the fronts and they can sort out the parcel locks.

Talked and emailed the property management company and they were unsure what was what.  It will be interesting to see how this all pans out.

One of the other condominium corp's mail boxes was damaged; I think by a snow plow but not 100% sure.  It cost them $7,000 to get them replaced.  Now they are "lucky" as the boxes all belonged to one condominium corp.  There are four condominium corp's that use our boxes.  So I mentioned this to the head of our board, as if something happens to one of the boxes who pays for it?

This story hasn't ended and I bet it won't be an overnight resolution to this either!

Oh; I got a newsletter from our board and it mentioned the no dog peeing signs I posted about here.  

"As per the corporation rules no signs are allowed outside of our homes."  

However until someone tells me otherwise they are staying put, as they are working as far as I can see!!!!

Finally, I posted another book review here.