I mailed a package from Missouri to Ohio a week or so ago. Today our contractor rural carrier delivered it back. I wasn’t here when it happened, but Mrs. H said that she asked the carrier what was up with that, and pointed out that the delivery field clearly had the Ohio address, but the carrier pleaded ignorance. She put it back on the truck and, I guess, it’s back on its way to Ohio???
Any idea what this could be about? The package wasn’t damaged and it doesn’t contain anything illegal in Ohio or Missouri, nor does it emit any smells or whatever.
Human error? I don’t know how someone working for USPS could mix up the sender and receiver, but I suppose it could happen. I wonder if the package’s postage had been cancelled. It’s not going anywhere without uncancelled postage on it.
I think you’ll have to file that under Shit Happens. I had a package shipped to me by someone that was inexplicably returned to them. As best we could determine, it came to my local branch, sat there overnight, and went back to them. When it showed up on their end they sent it again and I got it as normal. Nothing on the box indicated why it went back the first time.
I’d guess that your answer is right there. Contract workers aren’t USPS employees, they just have a low-paying job without benefits. The ones we have out this way give absolutely no shits about the quality of their work and would be happiest if they never had to touch another package again.
Well, keep in mind that, over the course of about nine days, my package made it out of my home town and as far as Kansas City before inexplicably system failed, resulting in me getting it back. I know this from the tracking. So clearly a USPS employee, or multiple USPS employees, had eyes on it at one point or another.
Even before the combination of pandemic- & Trump-related damage to the Postal Service, every once in a great while, something really weird would happen.
I remember about 30-some years ago, my grandparents got a letter from some friends. My grandparents and their friends both lived in Colorado at the time. But the letter had multiple postmarks on it, including one from Wheeling WV.
This happens with several packages from Amazon or REI to me every year. They get to the sorting facility across the river, then return from whence they came.
I had this happen with a payment once. I asked the postmaster (who I knew vaguely) and he pointed to the return address being on the back, on the flap, and said that it probably got put in the machine upside-down: it read that and coded it, so it got delivered thus. So it probably just takes one such error, and anyone who sees it after that assumes it’s under control.