(The following sci-fi story is made up and any resemblance to reality is only coincidental)
May 3rd 2015
I just finished packing my daily batch of parcels for my eBay customers and attached a RFID chip to each one of them. Y'all may remember in 2010 when these things started to be used for everything and became so inexpensive they were used by dollar stores on almost every item. The shoplifting became history, inventory management is a breeze - just walk around your shelfs with RFID scanner and inventory counts itself.
Dropped my parcels by RoyEx kiosk, it took only about 2 minutes to check-in all 78 of them. In 2012, when Royal Express started, they installed thousands of drop off / pick-up unmanned kiosks across the country and they were the first ones to start using auto-piloted GPS navigated delivery truck that call or email 2hrs and then again 15 minutes before attempting a delivery. Apparently RoyEx only has around 100 people in entire country.
CanadaPost is no longer operational, it was a big bang when they went bankrupt and only Purolator survived. UPS, FedEx and Puro are still trying to catch-up, but their combined volumes are now only 1-2% of those of RoyEx mainly because they have not been able to come even close to RoyEx efficiency and pricing. With RoyEx it now costs 15c to send a machineable letter and 95c to send a small machineable stadard size parcel across the country. All services contain tracking and delivery confirmation, even addressed admail. Many shops started offering free shipping because it has become very easy to subsidize it and RoyEx itself has boosted Canadian economy by 55% within 2 years.
On my way back home I will pick-up my post from the kiosk, I already indicated in my profile not to deliver, so I am not getting those automated calls from the delivery truck. Boy, were they annoying!
