That’s weird. Still, if I were you, I’d leave the packages at the post office. Let them figure out what to do with them.
Can you go to the gated community and just throw the stuff over the fence?
I’m going to @ @kaylasdad99, who knows more about the USPS than we do.
I have no suggestions, just sympathy. That sounds really annoying.
I know the list office will pick stuff up if you write, “not at this address” on it. Will UPS?
Here in Aus, the Post Office is supposed to deliver to a “delivery point identifier” – a random database lookup. The “delivery point identifier” is looked up by the third-party bulk-mail handler, and printed on the address label or stamped on the envelope in invisible UV ink. They may use whatever algorithm they can think of to select the DIP, but (!) typically they will ignore the post code and suburb to match “crt” to “crescent” rather than “court”. We get a fair amount of error mail that way.
Then the Delivery Point Identifiers are sorted into delivery order, and passed to a postman. He may get mail to “3” mixed up with “1” or “5”, but apart from that he isn’t paying any attention.
This was what I asked about in person at the post office. She told me “Only the person to whom the mail is addressed can legally put in a mail forwarding or change of address order, otherwise it’s considered mail fraud”.
If OP thinks this is any kind of fraudulent enterprise, and if “not at this address” doesn’t work, I would find a place, possibly in my basement or dusty attic, to store the packages until such time as the recipient calls for them, in which case you insist on seeing their ID and taking a photo of it. Perhaps that will discourage them, or encourage them to find someone else to pick on.
But how will UPS know if he writes on it? They only stop by if/when they have a package to deliver. He’d have to call or contact them online, which is no picnic.
You could drop off the packages that were sent via UPS but not addressed to you at a UPS drop point, like a UPS Store.
I can sympathize. It isn’t big packages, but people’s rent checks. It adds guilt to the annoyance. I don’t want to be the reason someone’s rent is late.
My address is
Echoreply
1802 Delbert St, 80999
Some property management company is
Properties-R-us
18002 Dingle St, 80999
I am the only 1802 D-street in 80999, so when someone writes 1802 instead of 18002 I get it, even though I’m not on Dingle St.
Writing all kinds of “not at this address” and such just gets the letter delivered to me the next day. The only thing that works is to completely cross off the 1802 and write in 18002. Or at least then I never see the letter again.
It had been one check every month or two, and then all of a sudden it was multiple per week. Calling the property management company determined they had 1802 on their phone recording. To their credit, as soon as they were informed they recorded a new message.
Got any neighbors you don’t like? Put the packages on their doorstep and let them deal with it.
As I understand it, if it’s USPS, then it’s now your property, that you can do with whatever you want.
About a year ago, I ordered an HP laptop from Discount Electronics in Austin, Texas and they shipped me two of them by accident. One of them had a packinglabel for someone in Florida.
A couple of people stopped by the office and their reaction was “Good. You got a free laptop.”
I let Discount Electronics know about the double shipping and they sent me a shipping label to ship the Florida one on to someone in Florida.
As i understand it, if it was sent first class, it’s definitely not yours.
Not really, that’s a special case that doesn’t apply here.
If something is sent via USPS to your name and address that you did not order or ask for, it is yours to keep and do with as you wish.
If something is misdelivered to you - either your address but not your name, or not your address at all - it is not yours. You’re supposed to return it to the carrier or drop in a mailbox, as described here: USPS.com FAQs . Unfortunately as the OP has seen this doesn’t always work and it often winds up right back in your mailbox. Personally I’ve taken the policy that the second time I get the same misdelivered letter I just cross out the entire address and write “RETURN TO SENDER” on it.
USPS has a list of city names for each ZIP code. For 11040, the following “cities” are accepted in addition to NEW HYDE PARK NY
GARDEN CITY PARK NY
GARDEN CTY PK NY
HILLSIDE MANOR NY
HILLSIDE MNR NY
MANHASSET HILLS NY
MANHASSET HL NY
N NEW HYDE PK NY
NORTH HILLS NY
NORTH NEW HYDE PARK NY
There are also cities that USPS says to avoid using, but the point is that there are often multiple acceptable city names.
I’m sure that’s not true - after all, they forward mail somehow. And although you cannot fill out a forwarding form for someone , that doesn’t mean they can’t follow the rest of the procedure without the form - there obviously is some sort of note put in a file . If I were you , I’d email/call customer service - I did email USPS when I had issues with my requests to hold mail and the local post office was unhelpful. The email got the problem fixed.
One advantage of our postcodes in the UK is that they only cover a few places. There are nine houses, all on this side of the road, that have my postcode, so if that’s correct, it will be at a neighbour’s house.
Parcel delivery firms are less accurate. In rural places, they will just guess and toss the new computer over the gate. I have had emails saying, “Your parcel has not been delivered, as no one was home” – when I was home all day. Most places require a photo, so the local website often has pictures of someone’s door with a parcel, asking if anyone knows whose it is.
The other good thing is that the Post Office delivers to the door. Letters and small packages through the letterbox, and they always ring with bigger parcels.
In the United States, I think that’s true of the ZIP+4 codes; the ones that have four digits added to the five digit ZIP code.
Mark them “Return to sender - not at this address” and put them in the mailbox or bring to the PO.
True, but most folks don’t know their own ZIP+4, and so won’t put it in when they’re ordering something.
A lot of places will do an address validation using a USPS API, where you type in the address, and it gives you a list of one or more corrected addresses to choose from, and those will include ZIP+4. But it sounds like the places the OP’s “neighbors” are ordering from don’t do that.