My current saga: Wife orders something online. It goes from NY to Virginia in 2 days. It arrives at the last facility where mail is sorted before delivery (a few miles from our house). But instead of going to our house, it sits for 5 days and is then is sent to New Jersey. WTF? Now it is “In transit to next facility” Any guesses where that will be?
No, he was processing a bunch of letters, didn’t finish, and instead of putting the rest back in the safe for someone else to process, they were left out and he went away on vacation.
Some years ago, I ordered a set of mildly expensive Pokémon cards for my son. They never arrived. I contacted the seller, they complained to the shipper, and in due course a replacement set arrived.
Some months later, I got a visit from some people who lived three blocks away: they had a weather-ragged box with my name and address on it. They explained they lived next door to a vacant house; the owner was away and had been for several months, and this box had been sitting on their porch for months. The vacant house had the same street number as my house: just three blocks away. They said they finally got tired of looking at this box getting saggier and saggier every time it rained.
So: one reason for missing boxes is misdelivery.
Election shenanigans:
For many years, I was the county chairman for a major political party. It was my responsibility to run the primary election, including ordering ballots, precinct kits, etc. So, I ordered the materials required. And waited.
They were delivered and stacked on the porch of a vacant house down the block. A realtor who was showing the house (and had sold me my house, so she knew me) told me they were there. Actual election ballots were sitting unsecured for days due to this error.
Now, I’m no longer the chairman. In fact, I work in a town 500 miles away from where I live and vote. So, in the most recent primary, I requested and received my absentee ballot. I completed it and placed it in the mail in plenty of time to be received back home. The day before the election day, I received a call from the postmaster in the town where I worked. She apologized and said that she found the ballot properly stamped and cancelled on the floor of the post office. It did not get received at home in time to be counted, so it was disqualified. Nice.
So, to answer the OP, packages can be delivered to a vacant house or, if small, can just be dropped on the floor.
There have been cases of mailmen throwing mail away , I assume to lighten their load if they are walking a route. They claimed they only threw away junk mail and I don’t know what punishment they got besides being fired.
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds!
Some years ago I read of Christmas card that was delivered 30+ years after it was mailed. It had fallen into some interstice at a PO (I imagine the Christmas rush was a factor) and not discovered until there was a major renovation. To me, the most amazing part was the same family owned the home after a generation. Although not impossible, it has to be rare.
This happened to me once. I received an Amazon package with two labels; my name and address on one side, another person’s on the other. I purchase things from Amazon all the time and so I wasn’t sure if it was one of my recent orders. I opened it up and there were some hinges in it (the kind you’d have on cabinet doors). I called Amazon customer service and explained the situation; I think they even had me take a photo of both labels and text it to them. They thanked me for reporting it. I asked if someone would be picking up the package to redeliver it and they said no, they will send another. I then asked what to do with it, they said I could do whatever I wanted. I tossed it.
My worst experience with lost mail was when I was renting a tiny house about the size of a one bedroom apartment (called a “Mother-In-Law House”). I had just gotten married and my then-wife had moved across the country to live with me. Her mother back east shipped a box with a lot of my wife’s personal belongings in it. It never arrived as far as we knew, and we filed a lost package report and everything with the USPS. They claimed it was delivered.
Some months later I was outside my house and my landlord was in a neighbor’s front yard, one of his other properties. The yard was filled with junk; various odds and ends, and a bunch of mail. Apparently the previous occupants skipped out and when he went into the place he found a bunch of clutter including mail from many of the neighbors. I saw some of my mail there too (just things like bank statements, nothing I really needed). It turns out they were mail thieves and were part of an identity theft ring. I have no doubt they’d stolen my wife’s package.
We never found my wife’s things, which sucked because it wasn’t anything of great monetary value. Just things like photos, old awards, stuff that only mattered to her. The thieves did get caught and arrested, it even made the local papers.
My recent experience was if they don’t know how to process it then they ignore it (don’t send it on and don’t return it) until you make an investigation request then it is magically found.
Newman!
I’ve had packages disappear en route to me just a handful of times. Twice from Amazon.com - the item was supposedly at a local warehouse, but then disappeared. They never claimed it was delivered - so both times I was able to have them cancel that order and re-order the item. Fortunately both times, the price was the same (once, it was actually cheaper).
A few months ago I ordered a couple of plastic “foot lockers” from Walmart. Identical, but each was shipped from a different location. One simply never showed up; Walmart customer service basically admitted “it must have gotten lost somewhere”. I re-ordered and got the replacement within a couple of days. I’d been worried about it, because the two items were enough to get me free shipping, while a single one would not. Fortunately they did the right thing and gave me free shipping on the one.
About 20 years ago, we suddenly started getting old physics journals in the mail. Every few days, one or more would arrive. All were addressed to my spouse. Eventually we figured out what had happened: my husband had donated a large stack of them to a college (in Brazil, I think). We took it to a shipping store and they packaged it up and sent it off - but evidently the package tore open. Since the contents were all addressed (the label was printed on the magazine cover) and presumably had valid (if outdated) postage, the post office just delivered them as they turned up.
In a similar vein, a few years ago we started getting Woman’s Day addressed to DesertRoomie in our mailbox. She is about the last person in the country who would be interested in the magazine. We just tossed them and in due course renewal envelopes also started showing up. Those were tossed too but the magazines kept coming anyway.
For three years they kept up and might be to this day for all we know – we moved three years ago and, needless to say, never sent a change of address card to the publisher.
You would think so, but…: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17S0TOfaw3E
my uncle was in Kenya for a few years. He got a Christmas card in August , thought it was way early but it was for the previous year.
OP here. Was expecting a small package yesterday. Did not arrive. This morning checking tracking on USPS website, I saw it had arrived at a neighboring town’s P.O. I called. Postal clerk said yeah, no need to check the tracking number, for sure it’s here. We had about 15 packages from your town arrive here by mistake this morning. We reship and it’ll arrive to you tomorrow