Your secondary source makes a nice claim, and then completely fails to back it up.
There’s a huge difference between “there are strict rules regulating how a piece of property you own may be used by yourself and others” and “it now belongs to the government”.
Be sure to look at the mailpiece for barcodes. In the course of sorting, USPS sometimes prints a barcode across the bottom of the item which can be read by sorting machines. If they mis-sorted the mail, the code is probably wrong, and the machines will read the code and send it back to you without humans even seeing the thing until it’s in your mail carrier’s hands.
Before I started putting correction tape over the codes, I’d sometimes get the wrong piece of mail 3 times.
As do we all.
Some years back we had a very lazy substitute mail carrier who would drop ALL the mail for every house on our street into one mail slot at random. We were all pretty used to it and whoever got the prize that day would re-sort and re-deliver. That worked well until one of the houses became vacant and was the target of the booby prize.
After gathering our pitchforks and torches and storming our local Post Office, the problem was “addressed” (no pun intended) for a few months.
Then we all started getting random mail mixed in with our delivery for completely dissimilar addresses - not even on the same carrier route (so shouldn’t be in the same cart to start with).
Complaining to the head post office in our city, we managed to get the person in charge of our zip code transferred out. He wasn’t a “postmaster”, but some other subordinate title.
The latest stunt was that for the last week of November and the first week of December, ALL magazines addressed to anyone on our carrier route was returned to the sender with Form 3579 “Notice of Undeliverable Periodical” and a bill for 50 cents. A few of my neighbors and I managed to get the publishers to send us the torn covers with the 3579’s attached and again marched on the Post Office. Their response: “So, what do you expect us to do?”. This, after waiting on line with 30+ other people for nearly an hour because only one or two windows out of 7 is ever open.
Don’t even get me started on the removal of mailboxes (drop-off ones). There used to be one near almost every relay mail one (the green ones that the walking carriers get the delivery mail from). Yet every day mail trucks come and load the relay mail boxes. But they’re too lazy to empty mail from the drop boxes, so they take them out?
No wonder the USPS is in dire straits - even with vastly reduced volume, they still can’t provide a functional delivery service.
Side note: A couple years I was staying with a friend in Illinois and dropped some stuff off at her post office as a favor to her. Pleasant people, not hiding behind bulletproof plastic, and good service. I told them “Y’know, you could really clean up if you opened a couple branches back East!” They got a good laugh out of that.
I get the wrong mail all the time I just put it back in the mail box.
Right. [The official policy of the USPS](http://faq.usps.com/eCustomer/iq/usps/request.do?session={e06534f0-2380-11e0-d1e7-000000000000}&event=1&view()=c{4779e600-a3b6-11de-f432-000000000000}&objectId=&eksObjectId=&objectType=Case&isJumpEnabled=false&isContentJumpEnabled=false&vendorKey=&objTitle=&versionId=5602&searchProperties=type:natural&naturalAdvance=false&allStr=&phraseStr=&anyStr=&noneStr=&keywordStr=&tTitle=Misdelivered Mail&topicFromSub=Receiving Mail&topicsORSubUrl=&report(0000)=p{7f5d0bb0-6974-11dd-e6c4-000000000000}&bcobjectId={409592d0-6974-11dd-e6c4-000000000000}&search=&topicAndSubtopic=Sending Mail$ALL) is as follows:
I designed our mailbox and had it custom made by an artisan. Uncle Sam *can not have it. *
Our post office has a slot marked “misboxed mail”. It is specifically for mail that has been placed in the wrong box. The instructions say that if it is the wrong address (Box 300 mail put in Box 310) then write “Placed in wrong box #”. If it is a person not at your box then write “addressee not at this address”.
About a year ago I was getting tons of mail for previous residents of my apartment, so I collected it all, rubber banded it together and stuck a post it note on it reading “These people no longer reside at this address” and placed it in the mailbox with the flag up. It was gone the next day, 3 days later I received the entire packet, rubber band and post it still attached, back in my mailbox.
To this day I continue to get mail for multiple different previous residents and I have been at the same address for 2.5 years.
Happens all too often at my house. Got some yesterday from a different city with no part of the address the same as mine. I stick a post-it on it and write “wrong address.” I’m often tempted to add a “dumbass” to the end of that but am afraid I’ll never see my mail again.
That’s what I do. Writing something like “Not at this address” or “Addressee does not live here” to me means it was correctly addressed, but the person doesn’t live there. I would expect mail marked as such returned to sender.
If it was just put in my box by mistake (not addressed to my house) I put it back, and put the flag up, and it goes away the next day. If the address is mine, but the name isn’t, I’ll write “wrong address” on it and put it back in the box.
Uncle Sam doesn’t want it. He just wants only his USPO people to use it. Not competitors like UPS, FedEx, local advertising flyer delivery services, political candidates, etc.