Post office idiocy

The BBQ Pit
1

I am generally one of those good customers that are patient and understanding. I work in customer service so I fully understand that some things happen and need immediate attention. So I don’t mind waiting in line, I don’t mind waiting in between customers as he puts the package away or files some much needed paperwork.

However, when you make me wait 5 minutes before helping me, and then get halfway through, walk away, and help an employee with some computer problem (said employee wasn’t helping customers, he was filing some paperwork), come back, start over, walk away… repeat four times, and it takes me 25 minutes from walking up to the counter to send one package media mail, I start to get a bit annoyed. At this point I don’t say anything or even let on that I am started to get mad. That would be unseemly.

The part that made me lose it was when I paid with my credit card. I have one of those fancy credit cards with my picture ID on it, so I don’t have to keep pulling out my freakin license. It has a very good picture of myself on the front. So what does the guy say to me? You got it!

“I need to see your ID, and you have to sign the back of your credit card.”

No, I don’t, I rudely told him, it is a picture ID, look at me in the face instead of running around doing everything but finishing my order and you would notice that. He then told me it was Post Office SOP for it to be necessary to sign it. I told him I didn’t want to sign the back of my fucking license, so dumbasses like him wouldn’t look at it alone, letting some guy use my license. (for the record, he didn’t even look at the front of my card, he looked at the back)

What kind of idiocy is going on down at the post office, I thought these guys had to take a rather hard test to get a job there. What kind of moron won’t let you use a credit card with a picture ID on the front without signing the card? And what kind of moron says to himself “oh, the picture on the credit card looks like the guy in front of me, but lets ask for his license” As if I would fake the credit card, the signiture, but forget somehow to fake the license. Get a fucking clue nimrod.

2

Don’t credit cards like that have the signature printed on the front, right next to the picture?

The post office made me sign the back of my card before they would take it. I’ve seen them do this to other people too.

3

Mine doesn’t have a signature on it by my photo, I have seen them with the signatures in the pharmacy in which I work though.

4

The same idiots who told me, when I kept recieving someone else’s mail for three years after I’d moved into the place, and asked them to STOP putting it in my box, said: “We can’t do that ma’am, it would be an invasion of their (the person who no longer lived there, but whose mail kept coming to MY box) privacy, it’s against the law”.

I said “??? What? are you kidding me? It’s MY box, get me your manager”. He got on the phone and told me that I’d have to bundle up all the mail I kept getting for these other people (actually was more than just one person), and write on the top “Not at this address” and then put it in the out mailbox for the postman.

So, guess what I found a few days later? Yup the same 20 pieces of mail that I’d rubberbanded together to send back, MINUS the one on top that I’d marked. :smack:

Several calls and years later, I was still recieving mass quanitities of mail from previous tenants. I just started throwing it away.

THAT’S the kind of idiocy that goes on down there.

5

Oooooo, post office idiocy!

How about the dumbasses who make pre-Christmas lines even longer by getting in said line…to buy stamps?!? Hey, there’s a stamp-dispensing machine in the lobby! It takes ones, fives, tens and change. Dispenses whatever amount of stamps you need. Use it you fucking morons!

(A petty complaint I know, but indulge me.)

6

Ahem!, and do these machines take DEBIT cards pray tell? Okay then!
(NOT that I would be caught dead in the Post Office during the holiday season :D)

7

Who goes to the post office to buy stamps? They sell em at gas stations and grocery stores. Heh, course I buy maybe two stamps a year, as all my bills are paid online or automatically. I love modern convenience.

Glad to know that Post office idiocy is more common than I previously thought.

8

Dear Mr. FONT=Times New Roman]_Methius[/FONT],

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We at the United States Postal Service are continually searching for new ways to make your Post Office experience, a pleasant and effective one.

We are sorry that w cannot accommodate your request at this time, as it has not been submitted using the proper form. Please re-submit your feedback using Standard Form USPO-1132/CFB. This form is available at any US Post Office Mail Sorting depot. For the location of the US Post Office Mail Sorting depot nearest you, please visit our website. If you are unable to obtain Standard Form ____USPO-1132/CFB___at the US Post Office Mail Sorting depot, you may request one by mail. Please send a stamped, self-addressed envelope, along with your request to United States Postal Service, 11111 I Street, Washington DC, 11555-1111; ATTENTION: Standard Forms Request Division. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery.

When you have filled out the Standard Form _USPO-1132/CFB, you may bring it in person to your nearest United States Post Office and present it to the postal worker on duty. Please retain the goldenrod copy for your records. For faster consideration of your request, it is recommended that you send it by certified mail to United States Postal Service, 11111 I Street, Washington DC, 11555-1132; ATTENTION: Standard Forms Response Division. Please allow up to eight weeks for a response. Please note: If you send your Standard Form _USPO-1132/CFB by certified mail, you must retain the aquamarine copy for your records.

Once again, thank you for bringing your business to the United States Postal Service, where our motto is: “When you’ve gotta get good service, go Postal!”

9

I’m fairly certain that the credit card companies require people to sign the card, and require businesses to only accept signed cards (but some don’t care/don’t check), at least from my recollection of the responses the last time this topic (“why the hell do I have to sign my credit card?”) came around.

As the wife of a postal worker (a letter carrier, not a clerk), from the knowledge I’ve gathered over the years about the bureaucracy of the USPS, my best guess* as to why a photo ID was requested is that the clerk was covering his butt. My WAG is that there is a rule saying that all credit cards must be checked vs a separate photo ID, and that you can be disciplined/fired for not getting one. Considering the supervisors I’ve heard about, I don’t blame him for asking. Yes, it sucks.

I buy our stamps from vending machines at the train station. That’s because my husband can’t buy stamps at his workplace. :smack: He isn’t allowed to stand in line for stamps with his uniform on, or otherwise go into the front lobby where the machine is. Not even on his lunch hour. I don’t know if that’s a service-wide regulation or something on a more local level, but there you have it - my postman husband isn’t the one to get stamps for us, and bureaucracy marches steadily on.

  • No, that’s not a cite. My husband isn’t available to ask, and he’s not a clerk anyway.
10

So, what prevents someone from getting a picture of anything (or anyone, at least) they want on their credit card? It’s not like the card companies know what you look like. Credit card photos are not valid ID.

There’s nothing stopping someone from stealing your mail and getting a photo credit card in your name with their picture on it and their signature on the back (which would make their fraudulent credit card more legitimate than yours, as far as a merchant is concerned).

Faking the license, OTOH, might be a bit more difficult than sending in a credit card application you stole out of someone’s mailbox.

11

Well, you may have a point there, but in the instances I’ve seen the people have paid with cash for regular old stamps. I just don’t see why they’d want to stand in line for 10-15 minutes when they could just get stamps from the dispenser. :confused:

12

Actually, I totally agree with you, I was being a smart aleck, sorry. I buy my stamps (what few I need, as someone else mentioned, I have most of my stuff online, or pay by phone, or automatic), at the grocery store like a NORMAL person.

:smiley:

13

I do it because the vending machines by me don’t sell a roll of stamps (just sheets/packets).

14

We have separate machines for Stamps Only, then an Automated Postal Center. It takes credit/debit cards. Plus, you can send packages domestically as well as buy stamps.

15

I dunno, it seems like you get a hell of a lot better service at the post office these days than you do at McDonald’s.

16

I have had great service at the USPS this year, but my Dad went to UPS in TN to send one pkg to FL and one to IL. Yep–despite clear labels indicating destination, I got my grandmother’s present and she got the big box with all the kid’s presents…UPS regrets the error. (duh)

17

What Ferret Herder said, it’s a credit card regulation. I went to the PO this week to mail stuff, and they had a sheet on what the rules were for credit card purchases. The cards MUST be signed (“see I.D.” and unsigned cards, and picture credit cards were not valid by themselves), you must also provide photo ID.

So blame the credit card companies.

That said, as a slightly related rant, I have my CC signed, and a huge “CHECK ID” on the back of my card, and only maybe 25% of the time do they ask for ID. That pisses me off more.

18

I pit the post office for taking my $9.00 for a Global Priority Mail flat-rate envelope and then apparently just losing the $80 skinsuit that I was mailing to the Netherlands.

Not only did you take my $9.00 and not provide the service you said you would, but you actually lost what I shipped.

I just paid you $9.00 to destry an extra $80 of what I shipped. Thanks ya :wally 's!

19

I don’t usually quote entire posts, but a huge ‘amen’ to everything to Viscera wrote. The PO employees don’t have any choice about it. It’s a hassle, but at least they do check.
I loathe shopping at the best of times but during this holiday season (is it over yet?) I was constantly reminded how loose procedures can be about credit cards. On my sole grim death-march-get-it-done mall shopping trip, not even one retailer even looked at the back of my credit card before ringing up the sale, much less asking for ID. That is, until my credit card company put a hold on transactions, requiring confirmation by phone due to the unusual number of purchases. Then, finally, they checked.
It was a hassle, but nothing compared to my identity being ripped off last year. Somebody took out a credit card in my name with Chase Manhattan Bank–bottom feeders in septic tanks. I didn’t know the card even existed. Filing police reports, fraud forms, etc. didn’t prevent Chase from hounding me for nine months, at home and at work, for charges they knew were from identity theft. It finally took a lawyer smacking the crap outta them to stop the harassment.
So yeah, it’s a hassle. But counter folks who check are part of the cure, not the cause.
Not that I’m bitter or anything.

20

Because they wanted a specific type of stamp that wasn’t available in the machine, perhaps? I know that at our post office, you had to get in line if you wanted holiday stamps or Dr. Seuss stamps or Breast Cancer stamps or anything other than the regular, everyday flag stamps.