Canada post says parcel volumes have reached ‘Christmas-levels’, expect delays

Canada Post says it is dealing with processing and delivering parcels at levels they’ve only seen during the busiest weeks of the Christmas season.

The sudden influx comes due to a surge of online shopping as people isolate at home during the coronavirus pandemic.

The postal agency says it delivered over 1.8 million packages on Monday alone.

“That’s similar to the biggest delivery days we see during the Christmas season,” they said in a release.

Customers are being warned that deliveries will be delayed since processing is taking longer because of the heavy volume of parcels combined with enhanced safety measures at postal facilities.

“Those measures include physical distancing in facilities that were never designed for keeping people two metres apart,” they said.

Canada Post also says customers should expect some other changes in parcel delivery:

• Signatures at the door are no longer required. Delivery personnel will use the “knock, drop and go” approach to deliver parcels which means they will knock or ring the doorbell, find the safest location available to drop off the item and then leave.
• For parcel pickup at the post office, the 15-day hold period has been suspended and parcels will not be returned-to-sender so that customers who may be ill or self-isolating can pick up their parcels when it is safe to do so.