Columbia is in Maryland. Not as high a coke medium of exchange community as Colombia.
Never underestimate the ability of the Teeming Millions to misspell proper nouns.
The law about mail in the UK is far less draconian. The biggest sanction the PO can impose, is to stop delivering your mail. We get it right through the door too, even if you live on the 23rd floor.
As far as I know there is nothing specific to deal with misdirected, or misaddressed mail. I think it’s left to common sense, except when something gets stolen - in which case it is a matter for the police.
If I move, I can pay them to redirect my mail for a period. £20 for three months. That is per surname, so if Mr Smith lives with Miss Jones, they pay twice.
How the heck would the USPS know that Tom, Dick and Harriet don’t live here? there? My parents spend 6 months a year living with us, and have their mail directed to my house. We’ve got a friend that’s been living with us for the last 4 months, and he gets mail to the house. So there are 5 current names associated with my address.
To make it more fun, while we’ve owned the house for 6 years, and was empty for 2 before that, we still get lots of mail for the previous residents, under at least 6 different name, one church (the previous owner was a church) and a number of committees and groups that were related to the church. Probably 20% of our mail is for a previous resident or owner.
With all that, there is no way I expect the postal carrier to know which addresses live here, which ones used to live here, which ones never lived here, etc.
Thanks, but I’ll take responsibility to make sure that I claim the right mail, rather than assume that someone at the post office can keep track of all of it.
Because you keep returning the mail that’s sent there addressed to them, of course.
That’s the whole premise of this thread. They’re not idiots. My carrier had even changed written my name inside the box when I moved in, having taken out the old one.