Post Office/Address Question

Factual Questions
1

A little background, then the question.

My wife and I moved into our condo back in May of 2005. The landlord (we rent) obviously moved out at that time. In June, we received notice from the Post Office that our ZIP Code would be split into 2 separate codes, and we were going into the new one. Cool.

2 months ago, I got a bill from a company that I have a line of credit with. Odd thing was, the bill had the wrong address on it, and had been forwarded to my “new” address. Even more strange, the incorrect address was the address of my landlord!

After a frantic evening of trying to figure out what some nefarious evil doers were up to, I was able to get said company on the phone. They informed me that their billing/addressing software is updated from the USPS, and when we moved, our forwarding was ending, and our landlord moved, the software attempted to connect the dots, thereby associating our names with my landlords new address. A perfect storm (shit storm that is) of postal proportions.

I didn’t buy this line whole-heartedly. How do they have the authority to change my billing address without my approval? Seems ripe for abuse. Anyway, I asked them to update to my correct address and remove any late fees, and they did. All good and well.

Then, just yesterday, my landlord dropped off an envelope with some mail of mine that had been sent to his house again. Not the same company as before; various other companies I do business with. I am outside the designated forwarding timeframe from my move back in May, and now I can’t tell which bills and other mail are going to go to my landlord’s address. It’s an imposition on him to keep delivering my mail, and I don’t want to accidentally miss a bill along the way. It’s weird that so many comapnies are having the same problem, so I guess it is possible. So…

My question is, should I go to the Post Office to get this fixed? Can they send out some form or notice that overrides my address with all companies that mail to me? Would a change of address, to my “correct” address, do the trick? Seems like this problem may stem from the Post Office anyway. Or would a better solution be going to the DMV and updating with them to my “correct” address, thus overriding the incorrect ones?

I don’t want to contact every company I have a bill with, but I will if I have to. The problem is I won’t know if they have the wrong address until they mail me something, and then there is a big delay while I wait for my landlord to mail me my stuff.

Any other ideas, or insight, into how to handle this?

2

I would call the postmaster or head supervisor of your post office and speak to them.

3

As for the error, talk with the Post Office, but I suspect that updating the address at the places you know about might be faster.

Regarding this automated updating of addresses, etc., I suspect that the mail these companies send out is labeled (and paid for the privilege to the USPS; the average person can’t do this on their own) as something like “Address Correction Requested.” In this case, any of this mail sent to a “moved out with forwarding order” address is not forwarded, but returned to the company with the customer’s new address attached, or updated electronically. This lets a company know when someone has moved so they can update their records, and avoids the issue of late mail because it has to go through the forwarding, plus forwarding orders expire after (IIRC) a year and if the customer doesn’t go to the direct effort of telling the company “oh hey, we moved months ago and have just been getting your bill forwarded, this is our new address” then suddenly the mail doesn’t get delivered any longer.

Check this USPS link for information about business mailing services, including the electronic updating of address changes and similar features.