Cruel letters from Santa prompt Canada Post to take action

[jayr]

How crushing would this be! (dont know if this has been posted yet or not)

Canada Post's volunteer Santas will have to start making lists of the children they write to after at least 13 children in the Ottawa region received letters from "The North Pole" containing demeaning and insulting language.

The volunteers, who are current or former Canada Post employees, send a standard printed message and a personalized note responding to children who have written letters to Santa Claus.

Volunteers must now log their own names and the name of the child they are writing to, the company announced in a news release Friday. A permanent logging and tracking process will be included in the program next year.

The company received nine complaints Thursday about letters containing inappropriate language. Four more were discovered Friday, and one more letter containing inappropriate language was found at a local sorting plant.

Canada Post is urging parents to open letters from Santa themselves before their children can do so. The delivery of Santa letters has been temporarily suspended while the company searches for other inappropriate Santa letters that might still be in the postal system.

In addition, Canada Post is asking more of its employees to volunteer for the program so "Santa" can respond in time for Christmas despite the problems that have slowed the response process.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/12/14/ot-santa-071214.html

[ollie]

This story is useless without sample letters.

[Hal Johnson]

Seconded. Sample Letter please.

[Hal Johnson]

Dear Timmy,

Your just not smart enough for the gift I had planned for you. Please try again next year, grade 1 will be easier the second time around.

[AD]

here's a story about this from a week ago. i bolded the juicy bits for you, because i know you like that.

Richard Starnes, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Friday, December 14, 2007

There was absolutely nothing Ho Ho Ho about the letters Rosalyn Da Costa's children got from Santa yesterday.

In fact, they included filthy messages.

They are two of 10, inappropriate letters dropped in mailboxes across Ottawa in the last two days, but there could be more.

Yesterday, Canada Post shut down its Write To Santa program across the city while it joins Ottawa police to hunt down the "rogue elf."

"Everybody here is so shocked," said Canada Post spokeswoman Cindy Daoust. "Disappointed doesn't begin to describe how we feel."

Ms. Da Costa was far more than disappointed, she was stunned.

When she went for the mail at her Coulter Place home in Orléans yesterday morning, she was thrilled to see Santa had answered letters from two-year-old Maya and 10-year-old Colton.

"My first thought was to wait until Colton got home from school so he could sit and read them with her," she said. "I've done this every year since he was a baby and he loves getting a letter from Santa."

She was happy she changed her mind.

"I told Maya: 'There's a letter from Santa just for you, let's read it'. We sat down on the couch, I opened the letter and began to read. My mouth dropped open: 'Oh, my god!' "

Each Santa letter Canada Post delivers contains the same main message with a hand-written personal postscript.

Maya's personal "P.S." said: "This letter is too long, you dumb s---."

"I went straight to Google, got the Canada Post number and called," said Ms. Da Costa. "A very nice lady at a call centre in Fredericton, New Brunswick, was shocked, and when I told her I also had a letter for Colton and was planning to let him read it when he got home, she said I should open it now just in case."

Ms. Da Costa went downstairs, picked up the letter and returned to the phone. What she read had both ladies gasping. "Oh, my god! Oh, my god!," they kept repeating.

The personal P.S. to Colton's letter read: "Your mom sucks d--- and your Dad is gay"

This brought a Canada Post supervisor to the phone.

"We were both going: 'My god, I can't believe it,' " Ms. Da Costa said. "He said: 'That's like dirt in my mouth. I can't even say it.' "

It was then that Ms. Da Costa decided she had to call the Citizen.

"I have never called the newspapers in my entire life," she said. "But other parents need to know about this. What if I had let my kid open this? I trusted you (Canada Post) to deliver Santa's letter.

"My warning to everyone is: Open your children's letters first."

However, that will not be necessary for a few days in Ottawa because Canada Post has put out an alert for letter carriers to not deliver any Santa letters, to intercept any others in the system and to send them back.

"We will check every one," said Ms. Daoust. "And we will make sure we have enough volunteers to send out new messages from Santa."

At present, the program will continue as it has for the past 26 years across the remainder of Canada and around the world. But Ms. Daoust promises a close look at the system in the future.

In 1999, an Oshawa seven-year-old received a Santa message from Canada Post that called him "one greedy little boy!"

But the latest letters are far more inappropriate and the first incident of their kind in the program's history, according to Canada Post president and CEO Moya Greene. "We deeply apologize to any families affected by this. We are shocked and heartbroken," she said.

Last year, Santa sent 1.06 million letters, enough to for recognition from Guinness World Records. "This is the largest program of this sort in the world," said Ms. Daoust. "We have sent 15 million letters since it began.

"Employees have volunteered with it since its inception and retired employees have stayed with us. It really is very near and dear to our 11,000 volunteers.

"The 250 volunteers In the Ottawa area are in shock and calling to ask what they can do, how they can help.

"We firmly believe there is just one rogue elf out there."

[Hal Johnson]

Ya, thats pretty bad, not really funny when you think about it actually happening. Poor kids.

[ollie]

Wow. Talk about disgruntled employees. I wouldn't even go that far.

[jayr]

I like this, from The National Post:

OTTAWA -- On Thursday, Canada Post shut down it's Write To Santa program across the city while it joins Ottawa Police to hunt down the rogue elf.

[AD]

Everything back to normal as of Tuesday.

Santa's letters back on track

Ottawa Citizen

Published: Tuesday, December 18, 2007

A delivery backlog of Santa Letters to the Ottawa region has been cleared, and mail service is back on schedule.

"We happily reported to Santa that all of his mail will be delivered to the North Pole in plenty of time for him to respond before Christmas day," said Canada Post spokeswoman Cindy Daoust.

Last Wednesday, Santa letters containing inappropriate language arrived at Ottawa area homes. Canada Post conducted a mass recall and inspection of all Santa Letters heading to children in the Ottawa region, creating a backlog in the delivery of letters from the North Pole.

"We've turned over additional information to the Ottawa police," said Ms. Daoust. "If the person responsible turns out to be a current Canada Post employee, they will face the immediate termination of their employment."

[dimafleck: the living legend.]

i bet the guy doing it is jewish.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

or drunk

[dogatthestation]

I would actually put my money on it being some Christian fundamentalist, who was probably drunk and was taking time off from bashing the Jews.

[ollie]

Maya's personal "P.S." said: "This letter is too long, you dumb s---."

The personal P.S. to Colton's letter read: "Your mom sucks d--- and your Dad is gay"

On second thought, these might just be factual statements, Santa be all seeing and all knowing. Which kind of makes him like Uncle God.

[NewRider]

Maya's personal "P.S." said: "This letter is too long, you dumb s---."

The personal P.S. to Colton's letter read: "Your mom sucks d--- and your Dad is gay"

pfffftt... I could've come up with better stuff.

[Esau.]

pfffftt... I could've come up with better stuff.

Best I could do man. I didn't have much time since I knew it wouldn't be long before they realized I wasn't a volunteer.

[phishtaper]

santa? satan? coincidence?

[bouche]

story here

Canada Post has identified the rogue elves responsible for rude letters from Santa that were mailed to Ottawa-area children in December, the Crown corporation said Thursday.

The culprits responsible for writing and mailing at least 10 inappropriate letters — containing curse words and descriptions of lewd acts — were minors, the postal agency said.

"Canada Post was horrified at the news last month that some recipients of mail from Santa in the Ottawa area had received inappropriate letters," said Cindy Daoust, Canada Post's manager of marketing and public relations. "While we apologized personally to those families affected, we also publicly announced that we would take every step possible to find the person or persons responsible."

Daoust said the suspects are not the children of postal employees. She did not provide further details.

The investigation into the letters, which Daoust said shocked the volunteer postal workers who staff Canada Post's Letter From Santa Program, resulted in the program being briefly shutdown in the Ottawa area in mid-December.

Daoust, who helps run the Santa program, said new security measures have been implemented that will allow the 11,000 current and retired volunteer postal employees to continue delivering Santa's mail.