An Alberta couple who entrusted Canada Post to deliver important legal documents to sell their home in Ontario won’t do that again.

That’s because their package, guaranteed to be delivered within two days, got lost for more than a week and put the sale of the house, five months on the market, in jeopardy.

This case comes on the heels of news in July that sensitive cancer documents, also sent via Xpresspost, are missing, putting the personal information of thousands of patients at risk.

Richard and Tania Vander Ploeg, along with their four children, moved from Owen Sound to Ponoka, Alberta, where Richard had found a better job at dairy farm.

But due to a soft housing market in the Grey-Bruce region, they didn’t manage to sell their house before they left in May.

As the family juggled costs associated with maintaining two homes, they prayed for a buyer and in August, they finally got an offer.

Their lawyer in Owen Sound emailed documents, which the Vander Ploegs printed out and signed along with getting the necessary officials to witness their signatures.

Richard took their documents to the local post office on Aug. 22, and was told with Xpresspost service, it was guaranteed to be delivered Aug. 24 — two days before the deal was scheduled to close.

But when the documents hadn’t arrived on schedule, they started to worry. Frantic calls to Canada Post offered little information, other than to say the tracking showed it was somewhere between Edmonton and Toronto.

“We stressed how important this was to us, that we might lose the sale of our house,” said Tania Vander Ploeg. “We were on pins and needles.”

The documents finally turned up on Tuesday via Kitchener, eight days after they were mailed.

Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier said this incident should be considered an unfortunate exception.

“This is not the type of service we want to offer our customers,” she said. “In fact, we work constantly to improve our performance. The experience by our customers in Alberta should not be a reflection of the postal service today and really be considered an unfortunate exception.”

Losier said Canada Post is continuing to investigate to what happened. .

In Cancer Care Ontario’s case, the agency told 6,500 patients that their personal information may have been compromised because it could not account for 15 colorectal screening reports sent to doctors’ offices across the GTA by Xpresspost courier in February and March.

The agency was also looking for 11 other missing reports, containing the data of another 5,440 individuals, and has since tracked down nine of them. Two remain missing.

The cancer agency used the Canada Post service to deliver 6,951 packages to doctors’ offices in three batches. An investigation by Cancer Care Ontario showed 185 packages were delivered without getting the required signatures.

The sale of the Vander Ploegs home was salvaged. More calls between lawyers, real estate agents and the Vander Ploegs resulted in a plan to allow the sale with copies via fax because the original documents were lost in the mail.

They asked Canada Post for $100, the amount insurance covers for lost items, but were told they could only get a refund for the postage, a little more than $14, because the item was eventually delivered.

But after the Star contacted Canada Post, a customer service manager called them Friday afternoon, apologized, offered the $100 and promised to get to the bottom of the situation.

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“I really appreciate her sincere apology,” Tania Vander Ploeg said. “I told her the $100 won’t make us or break us. We just want consumers to be aware.”

Though FedEx or Purolator Courier services are not available in their town, in the future, they’ll drive to Red Deer, about 45 minutes away, for important documents.

“It would be worth the drive, even considering fuel costs,” said Richard Vander Ploeg.