Since moving to the great MetroPlex, I have had more problems with the Post Office than ever before. Specifically, I have had six bill payments to various firms (two separate mailings of three items each to different parts of the country) disappear into the ether. This has prompted e-payment of both my electric and phone bills.
On the receiving end, I have had three issues of one magazine never arrive (two out of the last four months). I also ordered some art prints (of airplanes, if you must know) and after three weeks with no prints I sent a nastygram to the company, who sent out another shipment. The second shipment arrived in three days. Three days AFTER that, the original shipment showed up in my mailbox with a postmark 28 days old. I returned the first shipment with no problems (I didn’t open it and the post office marked it as “refused delivery”), but my question is this:
Do I have any recourse with the Post Office regarding non-delivered items? Can I prove that I did not receive a magazine? Is there any level of “normal loss” that the Post Office assumes?
The USPS is a semi-governmental agency. It has certain governmental protections and fundings while maintaining a life of its own in certain respects. For example, the USPS has a monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail and the use of mailboxes, not to mention certain protections against tresspass laws. Given how hard it is to bring the government to a courtroom for any reason (unless it is on the prosecution’s side), I doubt you’ll be able to bring action against the USPS. Ever.
While you almost certainly can’t take any legal action against the USPS, you shouldn’t suffer in silence. Write down a clear list of everything that’s gone awry, send it to your local postmaster, and if you don’t get some sort of reply, call and ask to discuss the problems with him or her. If no one ever complains, those in charge can be forgiven for thinking that everything is hunky-dory!
You know, I live in that certain MetroPlex area myself. I never put mail in my mailslot: It will be lost. I drop bills at the postoffice (Lover’s Lane and Inwood), and have only lost two bills in the past ten years. My letter carrier is too busy listening to SPORTS RADIO VERY LOUD to really notice dropped letters. I also receive my neighbor’s mail on a regular basis.
To the OP: I have complained to the postmaster about my child-support letters not reaching their destination, and things were done to fix it. As it turned out, the destination’s letter-carrier had a grudge against my ex-wife.
IANAPW (postal worker), but my husband is one, and I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge from him and his friends from work - they talk shop a lot.
It might help to try to narrow down the exact source of the problem. Were all the lost bills sent out by putting them in your own mailbox, or in one particular blue dropoff mailbox? Basically, I’m trying to figure out if it’s that your letter carrier is a slacker/stealing/not delivering mail, or if perhaps your local distribution center sucks, or what.
Regarding the prints you ordered, was the second shipment via a different carrier? (UPS, FedEx, etc.) For some reason, I have just the worst trouble receiving Amazon.com packages via the USPS at my house. My husband delivers the mail to our house, so I know it’s not him - both times I had Amazon deliver to my house last year, the package got held up at one particular distribution center (which sorts the mail by local post office then sends it to those offices) for a week. I could see it via the Amazon.com tracking service, just sitting there. Stranger yet, that’s not the usual distribution center for my area. The first time, I had the book redelivered after USPS customer service couldn’t help me. I explained the entire situation and the first question was “did you talk to your carrier?” - every night, yes, and I just told you that! It arrived quickly via UPS, and then the USPS one finally showed up a few days later. So for some weird reason, Amazon’s shipments to me via the USPS just get misrouted somehow. I’m not sure if that’s what’s going on in your case, but sometimes odd things happen.
Anyway, tracking where the outgoing mail is getting lost is probably the best place to start. If your outgoing mail only gets lost when you put it in your own box, then it might be the carrier, or a clerk at your local PO. If it’s only at a certain mailbox in another part of town, then it might be the carrier who picks up that mail, or the clerks at the other office, or the distribution center. Anything you can remember will be helpful when you write a letter.
I’ll talk to my husband when I see him, and he might be able to give more advice.
My ex is a mail carrier, and I agree with those who say you should document the problems and discuss with your postmaster. The postmaster should try to find out if there’s a common cause for these problems.
In all deference to Ferret Herder, the USPS SUCKS BIG TIME. I HATE the post office. I pay ALL my bills via BILL PAY, a free online bill payment service available to me from my credit union (don’t get me started on banks). I NEVER EVER EVER mail anything from the mail box out front. I do not trust the USPS to pick up the mail from my house. If I do have to mail something, I take it to work, or drop it off at the mail box in the post office.
I urge everyone I know to use Bill Pay and to not mail anything from their house.
Actually I do put some things in my mailbox, I put mail that is delivered by mistake back in the mail box with WRONG ADDRESS written on it in big black or red felt tip pen. Yes, even if it’s for the guy next door.
You may ask why I hate the post office. It’s a real long story, but the highlights are as follows.
‘Out of date’ or collectors magazines do not qualify for ‘media’ mail
Anything over 13 oz. gets bumped from First Class to Priority Mail
The cancellation dates on the mail are, at a minimum, 5 days old when First Class is supposed to be delivered in 2-3 days. And who knows how long the letter sat at the post office before it was cancelled?
The mail man that delivers to our place refused to deliver the mail if he had to get out of his vehicle, i.e. a car that did not belong to us was parked in front of the mail box. He couldn’t drive up to the box to drop off the mail. I went down to the post office and asked for the violation number to call the police and have the car towed, but they wouldn’t give it to me!
Waiting to mail a package in line with 22 other people, there were two postal people working while two other postal people just sat there chatting. One guy, while chatting, carefully cut the corner off a package of sheet of stamps and started counting the sheets. He lost count twice and had to start over twice. I was 12th in line and when I left he was still counting stamps.
0.37 cents to mail a letter.
Oh, my husband will cheerfully admit that there are plenty of slackers and incompetent people in the USPS. (He works his butt off.)
My local NBC affiliate had a special report on bill payment systems; they’re handy, but it was noted that many online bill payment systems don’t actually send electronic funds, though - they cut checks and mail them, so you’re still subject to late payments, un-updated addresses in the system, and so on.
I will point out that First Class mail isn’t guaranteed at 2-3 days - that’s Priority Class.
Check the misdelivered mail next time - if it’s barcoded on the bottom, it’s probably a computer’s fault and not your carrier’s. This type of mail is called DPS mail. The barcode is created by people who get a couple seconds to look at the letter on a computer screen and - at least in the office that my husband works at - carriers are not allowed to sort the DPS mail in with their other letters. The DPS mail is supposed to be left unsorted, and taken out as a “third bundle” (the other two being letters and “flats”, or magazines and other large mail). So typically the carrier gets enough time to check where the DPS mail for your house starts, where it stops, and none in the middle. If the computer miscoded your neighbor’s mail for your own house’s barcode, then it gets stuck among your mail. Plus they’re human, mistakes happen too, they just shouldn’t happen a lot.
I’m no apologist for them - I’ve heard many a tale of mismanagement and other things - but there are many misconceptions about the USPS as well.
I am aware that not all companies that I pay via bill pay accept electronic payments and that the bill is cut to a check and mailed through the mail. However, that is transparent to me. I do not have to shell out 0.37 per bill for the payment.
It is also true that you, as the user, must keep the address to send the payment to up to date.
I may be overly optimistic here, but I feel that if a company is getting bill pay checks that they will go, hmmm, if I accept electronic payments then I will get the money sooner and with less hassle. And then start accepting electronic payments…
I’m not saying Bill Pay is right for everybody, but if you have the service free from your banking institution, then try it out. You can even set it up such that you control when the payments are made, or you can have a monthly payment sent every month.
Another bonus is that all the information is on their computer, so you don’t have to worry about your machine crashing and losing all your information.
p.s. I just got back from the www.usps.com website looking at the customer guide to services area and I was wrong, First Class Mail is supposed to be delivered in 1-3 days, not 2 days.
However, if the post mark is 5 days old by the time I get the piece of first class mail, a letter from a friend, then it is 2 days late, not counting the time the letter sat in the post office before it was post marked.
So I’ll admit the 1 day mistake in the rule definitions, but my point is still the same.
Oh, I have nothing at all against online bill payment systems, I even used one for a while. I was just citing problems that were brought up in a “consumer report” that the local NBC affiliate aired, in case you or others weren’t aware. Some people in the report weren’t aware of the possibility that their payments might be late because they were being sent via the USPS in many cases, and thus subject to delayed mail, billing addresses that weren’t updated with the payment service, and so forth.
I also made a mistake in that Priority Mail isn’t guaranteed to be 2-3 days, but it is in fact handled with more expediency and in other ways to at least hustle it along faster than First Class.
First Class Mail isn’t guaranteed either - the 1-3 days is an estimate. If your mail is taking 5 days to go across town, then yeah, something’s up. If it’s taking 5 days to get from one coast to the other, that’s less unusual. 5 days from Hawaii to the Midwest is speedy. The USPS could definitely stand to improve their service in various ways, but they deliver everywhere in the US and do a fairly good job of it for the cost.
Back on topic with the OP, my husband stopped by on his route to deliver our mail but he was too busy to ask; I’ll try to get his opinion soon, but it might be Monday before I’m posting regularly again.
It says “guaranteed” only under the Express Mail speed listing. That’s the only one that’s guaranteed; all the others are estimates. Asking a postal clerk will get you the same response - as does asking my husband who just got home.
Here’s a quote from the Express Mail: “Express Mail offers overnight service to many destinations that is guaranteed or your money back.”
As for the OP: My husband said you should go to the post office - and it doesn’t have to be yours, it can be any office - and get a few complaint forms. Fill it out with the problems you’ve been having (be specific) and pop it in the mail - he says don’t give it to your carrier, for obvious reasons. Then a couple weeks later, fill one out again and mail it again; he says you need to keep on them. These forms will go to the postal district’s office, which oversees all the post offices within its area.
Thanks for the postings, everyone. The plan is to go talk to the local postmaster.
FWIW, this all started when an enormous new post office opened up literally across the street from me - I can throw a rock and hit the post office.
The lost outgoing letters were all from my outgoing mail slot - since then I have made special trips to the post office (across the street! ) to use the blue mailbox and haven’t had anything get lost.
The two shipments of prints were both USPS. It’s a small company and I talked to the lady personally who mailed both packages: nothing different was done, but one spent three weeks in purgatory somewhere.
Also, the magazine that keeps disappearing is one that contains a CD every month, and costs US$7.99 to replace at the bookstore. Ouch!
pilot141, I read your latest post to my husband - he thinks many of your problems may be just due to the post office being new and everything being different.
That was true until I got to the part about the magazine. He thinks someone’s stealing that, but says “Remember, your carrier is the last person to handle your mail.” So it might be disappearing at a distribution center (where mail is sorted) or a clerk at the office across the street might be stealing it. Since yours is disappearing so often, it’s more likely to be happening at an office near you, rather than nearer the magazine’s origin, I’d bet.
So write this up in some detail and send it to the district office, on the complaint forms. Mention the monetary value of the lost items. If/when they move on this, I would bet they’ll send out the postal inspectors to monitor what’s going on.
“Postal Inspectors” - for some reason they sound more ominous than I would expect. I’m picturing a black Ford Crown Vic swooping down on some letter carrier and four commandos jumping out and yelling “Drop the magazine! Now!”
I don’t know how it works in the US, but I know that in Canada, even registered mail isn’t guaranteed to arrive. Anything with a value under a certain amount is not guaranteed. Okay, maybe guaranteed isn’t the right word, but the nature of things is that if the item is worth less than, say $50, the postal system will feel no urgency in helping to locate your missing mail. They CAN find it, mind you, but higher value items take priority.
I used to have problems with mailings. If I mailed stuff from the post box close to my house, half of it was returned to me or lost. If I mailed stuff from the post box close to my work, most of it was sent correctly. Now, I mail right from a postal office and I’ve had a lot less problems with mail. I also got myself a PO Box and th eonly times I’ve had problems receiving was when a friend had sent to the wrong PO box number.
I do a lot of mailling on a regular basis, so I thought I’d just give some advice on what I’ve heard, and how I’ve worked around the common problem.
Do not complain to your postmaster-all they care about are making their “numbers”.I have seen what really gets action is a letter to your local congressman(or woman).Management hates those,they will ignore almoat any other complaint.I had a customer on my old route actually get in contact with the “regional vice president” ,he was commenting that the mail came at a different time every day.The VP(used to be assisant Postmaster General) actually told the customer that there was nothing he could do,He is in charge of the whole New England area and he couldn’t do anything ?Today we had a supervisor tell us the district manager is “concerned” because in the last month carriers are taking longer to do their routes.She hasn’t looked outside to see the 6 inches of snow and 2 inches of ice over everything. Sorry for the rant.
Do not complain to your postmaster-all they care about are making their “numbers”.I have seen what really gets action is a letter to your local congressman(or woman).Management hates those,they will ignore almoat any other complaint.I had a customer on my old route actually get in contact with the “regional vice president” ,he was commenting that the mail came at a different time every day.The VP(used to be assisant Postmaster General) actually told the customer that there was nothing he could do,He is in charge of the whole New England area and he couldn’t do anything ?Today we had a supervisor tell us the district manager is “concerned” because in the last month carriers are taking longer to do their routes.Today we were told if a customer hasn’t cleaned access to the box or the box is blocked to skip it and re-deliver when it is clear(March?).She hasn’t looked outside to see the 6 inches of snow and 2 inches of ice over everything. Sorry for the rant.
- both times I had Amazon deliver to my house last year, the package got held up at one particular distribution center (which sorts the mail by local post office then sends it to those offices) for a week. I could see it via the