A USPS package of mine went awry recently because I added South to the address. Instead of 000 Blank Street, Zero City, I wrote 000 South Blank Street, Zero City. Correct zip, too.
Came back marked NSS, which is code for No Such Street. There is no South Blank Street. No North Blank Street. Just Blank Street. It’s about 2 blocks long but in a dense downtown area.
So why the confusion? Was this marked No Such Street by some yuk at a computer terminal before it ever got to a carrier in Zero City?
(Note: If “There is no South Blank Street” is answer enough for you, you are a yuk. Please get off the Dope and get back to work.)
Short answer: I’m a yuk. But before I get back to work. . .
The USPS has tightened up on address quality in recent years. What’s more likely is that a scanner attempted to match it against the USPS address database (yep, they do have one), and the response came back “NSS,” stopping it cold. If they’re able to snag it from the get-go that there’s no such street, there’s no point in wasting people time in researching it to see, “Oh, some hapless soul added an extraneous word, but otherwise the address is good.” From a cost standpoint, it’s better for them to send it back to you and have you figure out the problem.
I have worked in the postal services - but not in America, so they may be different from our system.
First - If I saw your parcel and knew the city streets, I would try to confirm the delivery point. If you included a phone number for the receiver on the address label, I would check the phone book. Phone, address, and name all match, I’d fix the address and forward for delivery. If any details didn’t match, I’d call the number and ask a few questions. If they can tell me that they’re expecting a parcel from Beware of Doug, I’d forward for delivery.
If I just assumed that you added the south by mistake, and adjusted the address - well I’d be risking my job. It might be that you were doing a mass mail out and mixed up addresses. I need to be certain of the details.
Management, however, hate us doing this. It’s called ‘over servicing’. If the customer spent $20 on postage, the company only wants to spend $10 on getting it delivered. Wrong address? Return to sender. It’s their fault for not addressing it right. That’s the company position.
So my guesses as to why your parcel was returned
the parcel centre that handled it has a ‘don’t over service’ policy.
the mail sorter just couldn’t be bothered verifying the address.
you didnt have enough info for them to verify the address.
they tried to confirm the address but the receiver couldn’t be reached or couldn’t confirm the parcel was for them.
America may be more advanced than us. They may have automated parcel sorting by machine. If the computer couldn’t match the address, it may just dump off into a bin for RTS. The human staff may be so reduced that they have no time to check addresses and just bump the whole lot off. Or the parcel centre may be far from the destination, so the person bumping the rejects really wouldn’t have any idea what streets are in the destination city.
Hopefully an American postal worker can clarify further what the US system is like.
On preview, hrhomerand Earl Snake-Hips Tucker have snuck in and answered. I agree with both of their posts. I will point out, people do still try to use addresses like the one hrhomer wrote. What’s worse is the return address is usually just ‘Love from Aunty Pam’ or similar. :smack:
But yes, the post office from what I have read has expanded the use of optical character recognition devices to read addresses. (Originally it was just zip codes).
They likely have these in more central sorting facilities, before farming the mail out to the smaller destinations. Then they likely code the address (or zip details) onto a bar code so that the sorting machines down the line don’t have to be so fancy.
So if your address failed first test, it was rejected immediately.
Computers have no common sense. If it sees South Main it doesn’t have the common sense or latitude of decision making to say “maybe you mean just Main?” We can see “South” is a more easily an error and drop the “South” than “Spanish Main Street” or “Jeremiah Main Way”. Or did you mean “Stough Street”? Too much freedom of interpretation, as you can see by using Google on obscure terms, or if you use iPhone’s spell checker, can result in complete misdirection… It’s easier to send it back if the answer is confusing than to guess and misdeliver.
I was actually talking with someone about this the other day. We each have had recent success in sending mail to friends on rural routes like this:
“John Doe
County Road 867
Zzzz, Arkansas”
No house number or anything. But we’re talking about a road where they have lived 10+ years and have maybe two dozen people living on the entire length of the road.