Deliver parcels while no mailboxes in Saint Pierre and Miquelon

On the French side of SébPhilatélie, I succeed to write regularly on Saint Pierre and Miquelon's philatelic and postal life. For some articles here, I will bring you some articles in English on this French oversea collectivity (France with some freedom because it's so tiny and always "if the weather allows").

Yesterday, Monday December 28th 2051, French local public channel La 1ère reports on how the post office in Saint Pierre managed one and a half ton of parcels that arrived on the archipelago the previous week, in time for Christmas.


Dans les coulisses de La Poste de Saint-Pierre... par spm1ere

The report can be watch on DailyMotion too.

Customs agents calculate taxes on seventy per cent of the imported packets, postmen write down the receipts that will be placed in the community mailboxes...

Community mailboxes... Like in Canada? Poor people...

Yes, they have to walk to the post offices in Saint Pierre or in Miquelon. No because the mailboxes are located inside the heated post offices.

Like the local post website explains, there are no home delivery. Residents must get a numbered mailbox and be sure correspondents use it on the incoming mail.

Jean Ketterlin, postmaster of the archipelago, one of the philatelic important people of the islands, sitting in front of the yearly poster of the stamp issues to come (La 1ère, December 28th 2015).

The director of the oversea post, Jean Ketterlin, reminds people to be sure the complete address and all the customs papers are with the parcels, to be sure to get them quickly and easily.

But, the brother-report of the same day, recalls some electronic toys are going for a postal ride back to Canada or Metropolitan France.


To know about France Overseas today:
The French group La Poste is the universal service operator in Metropolitan France, Corsica, the five overseas départements and three of the overseas collectivities - here listed in the order of rising autonomy, even if none is independent. In the overseas areas La Poste has a special office, La Poste Outre-Mer, to adapt the postal service depending on the autonomy (SPM issues stamps and has own local rate) and natural specificities (boat delivery in SPM and Guyana's forest, importance of bank activities, specific airmail rates to other French territory).

The last overseas territory (French Southern and Antarctic Land or TAAF), the two other collectivies (Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia) and New Caledonia (known as itself) issue their own stamps and managed their own postal companies (or administrations for the TAAF).

Don't hesitate to read the Wikipedia in English article on Overseas France.


Concerning Saint Pierre and Miquelon stamps, the philatelic office was closed in Spring 2015. The Territorial Council and the local post continue to promote the stamp program of course, but, for now, collectors must order from La Poste shop website.

Beware La Poste is known to sell only overseas stamps printed in its printer plant, Phil@poste Boulazac (hence the little "Phil@poste" at the bottom of French stamps). Scandals happened when technological stamps from New Caledonia (golden foiled, hologram, lenticular) didn't find their way to the collectors who ordered only by the French post's website