This thread is insane.
FWIW: I'm also an October applicant (post C6) waiting on AOR.
First up:
Calling, mailing, web-forming, whatever contact you choose with CIC is likely to yield nothing. Nada. Zip. What it is guaranteed to do is take resources away from CIC dealing with other issues - therefore increasing the work load and further delaying applications.
CIC Agents are call centre folks. They do not process applications - they will have access to certain information for sure but they are not immigration officers. The information they give can be trusted to a certain extent but in terms of processing etc, I wouldn't take their word as gospel.
What happens to applications that arrive on say October 18? And then October 19? I don't know - they may be stamped with date received but are they separated in to piles and everything divided up equally so that people opening the envelopes only do so in order of receipt? Are people prevented from opening envelopes from say October 21 when others are still opening October 18 because they got more October 18 envelopes than the others? I don't know.
The bottom line is that CIC processing time is officially 12 months for standard cases. There is no AOR commitment timeline. There is also THOUSANDS more applicants since the rules changed. You can see on the spreadsheet - 650+ recorded on this forum alone vs under 100 for previous months. Not every application will be on this forum. Has CIC brought on extra resources to deal with it? Who knows but I doubt it - there is no benefit for them to spend extra $$$ on more resources.
So yeah - it makes sense that AORs are going to be delayed. AVERAGE is there for a reason - people get below average and people get above average. It's maths.
So for the love of everything Canadian, please, please stop creating hysteria, stop hounding CIC and just let things run its course.