# percent of mail lost by USPS? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 21, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537 "2010-09-21T14:51:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/21 "2010-09-23T19:44:34Z")
I do need to put a plug in for the USPS for one recent encounter. There’s a self-serve shipping kiosk at our local branch, which is accessible after hours. I went to ship a package to my son at summer camp. Put it on the scale, weighed it, paid, grabbed the postage sticker out of the slot, tossed the package in the pull-down receptacle, walked out of the post office, realized I was still holding the postage sticker… 😕:eek::smack:. So I walked back in, tossed the sticker in the bin as well, and went home - hoping they’d find the two pieces and put them together. Called the next morning, the man on the phone put me on hold, rummaged around, came back, and said “got them both, you’re fine, it’ll go out today”. I do hope he had a good laugh after he got off the phone, and shared with his co-workers the tale of the dumb broad who’d just called. He was certainly professional and courteous with me and he deserved to have a laugh at my expense. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/22 "2010-09-23T20:33:31Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Consider yourself lucky. I get misaddressed mail (not only for my neighbor, but for the guy with the same number a street over, and sometimes someone with a completely unconnected address) at least twice a month, no exaggeration. I just walk over to the neighbor or dump it back in the mailbox if it’s completely off. I can only hope the same happens for me. My experience has been similar. I probably get a couple of mis-delivered bits of mail a month. Like you, if it’s for one of my neighbors, I walk over and stick it in their mailboxes. If it’s from further away (I frequently get mail intended for a doctor’s office three blocks away, which shares the same “house number”), I write “please redeliver - wrong address” on it, and stick it back in my mailbox. It’s always gone the next day; I hope that the carrier is actually bringing it to the right place. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![UncleFred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f0a364/32.png) [@UncleFred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleFred)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/23 "2010-09-23T21:00:17Z")
I think most of the mis-deliveries (not actual losses) are at the final stage of delivery, with the local carrier/sorter making the mistake. The cases of mail destined for Idaho ending up in Timbuktu are rare. I have both a PO Box and a home address. Between the two, probably once a month I get someone else’ mail incorrectly delivered to me. At home I just take it to the neighbor - if at the PO Box I turn it in at the desk. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2010, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/24 "2010-09-23T23:48:09Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > About 25 years ago, I was not getting my car loan bills about 3 months out of 4 - they simply never arrived. It turns out the local carrier was looking at the name (my maiden name), and deciding that there was no such person at my address (we were newlyweds in married student housing) and returning them to the bank. I was making the payments anyway, so the bank didn’t try too hard to sort out why they were getting returned. This was an unusual situation, clearly the mail carrier was being an idiot. Or could the idiotic action have been failing to add your name to the mailbox when you moved in? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Accident](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Mr.Accident](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Accident)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2010, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/25 "2010-09-24T00:23:44Z")
The only time I ever have trouble with the USPS is when I live on a street with a house # identical to the house # of a place on another street that has a similar name. For example, in my old house, my address was 155 Westview Road. I was constantly getting the mail for the people who lived at 155 Westview Drive, and vice versa. (House # and road names changed.) The bad thing was, those 2 streets are on opposite sides of town, on completely different routes. The only other time I didn’t get my mail was when a friend shipped me some goodies from Amsterdam. I don’t want to blame it on the post office though, as neither of us are sure exactly where it went missing between her place and mine. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/26 "2010-09-24T05:17:37Z")
I occasionally get mail that’s intended for a neighbor. I’ll just leave it at their door. A few times, I’ve gotten mail addressed to someone blocks away, or in a completely different city. I dropped such letters in a mailbox when that happened. ---
**Author:** ![Kevbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e47774/32.png) [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2010, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537/27 "2010-09-24T12:56:53Z")
[QUOTE=Mama Zappa] (my maiden name), and deciding that there was no such person at my address (we were newlyweds in married student housing) and returning them to the bank… clearly the mail carrier was being an idiot. [/QUOTE] Not so much. With student housing they probably need to pay much more attention to the names, as students come and go with the semesters. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/percent-of-mail-lost-by-usps/554537.md?page=1)