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STRANGE USPS Mail Delivery Problem!

Bongolation

Bongolation

Nov 9, 2001
8,047
148
California
Disclosures
No Bogus Endorsements
#1
Can anyone with knowledge of the post office shed some light on this weirdness?

Sometime in mid-March, I noticed I wasn't getting any mail. Mail delivery had been a bit odd for a long time, but I don't get much anyway. I did notice that I wasn't even getting the weekly pile of local grocery & retail ads. I think I got one small card and my outgoing mail was being picked up. I tried to catch the mailman as he went by, but he wasn't even stopping at my house.

After not getting any mail Saturday, I determined I was going to call the local post office on Monday (always an ordeal) and see if there was any explanation for this odd situation.

When I looked outside Monday afternoon, I found an immense bundle of my mail dating back at least as far as the first week of March including my bills, magazines, junk mail, etc., etc.

Any mail mavens have useful thoughts on this strange situation? Anything I should ask when I call up and they predictably play dumb? :confused:
 
#2
Here is something I've learned - your bills will be due on the same day each month. And for the most part, they will always be the same each month. If you do not receive the paper bill in the mail, you can always log on via the internet or occasionally pay over the phone. That way, you never have to worry about it not arriving to you, or conversely, not getting to the phone / car / etc. company.
 
#8
Bongolation said:
No.

I've thought they could have effed-up someone else's vacation hold and held my mail instead of theirs, but I sure can't see how they'd do it, never mind that I'm obviously home.
Click to expand...
Letter carrier here. It sounds like that is just what happened. If you got a big bundle your mail was being held, assuming it was longer then ten days, otherwise it would have been returned to sender. It can happen for a few reasons, the person putting in the vacation hold put down the wrong address and the carrier did not know the route well enough to recognize the names. For example you live on Smith RD and the mail should have been held for Smith DR or numbers could have been transposed say 3168 instead of 3186.

Secondly he may have thought your house was vacant for some reason. but in that case you shouldn't have gotten mail back as a bundle. Unless it had yellow stickers on many pieces in which case he tried to forward it and the forwarding unit returned it to the carrier because no valid change of address was on file.

Third there was a dispute on file, say an ex-roommate filed a complaint and a hold was ordered while the situation was investigated. Or the postmaster ordered a hold, most likely because a carrier took a dog attack at your address. But in that case a supervisor should have visited and attempted to deliver a warning/suspension of service letter.

Or you don't have a mailbox. While your regular carrier may have dropped the mail off anyway substitutes on the route would come to your address and find no box and bring the mail back as undeliverable, no mail receptacle.
 
#9
Box was fine, marked according to regulations.

House was visibly occupied, no dogs, no disputes, no other occupants, no failed deliveries, no hazards, no notifications of difficulties.

The three-week vacation hold would have taken some fairly complex, multi-level screwups of the address.

Never mind that my bundle contained some outgoing mail from my neighbors. No telling how overdue that will eventually be. :rollno:

Bigtime screwup of some kind, unless DHS was deciding to divert and look at my fascinating correspondence, but I don't imagine they'd be that clumsy with all their lavish money and manpower.
 
#10
Bongolation said:
Never mind that my bundle contained some outgoing mail from my neighbors. No telling how overdue that will eventually be. :rollno:
Click to expand...
For some reason, on the street, the carrier thought your house was undeliverable, moved the mail to the back of his hand/satchel, where it got mixed with outgoing mail and he returned it to the office where he put it on ten day hold. You can only ask him for the exact reasons. Among my suspects, it was a mounted route and someone was parked in front of your box. Something weird like there was an active bee hive at your box location. It was like the Goodfellas scene were the local mob/gang scared off delivery to your exact location...
 
#11
Chebass88 said:
Here is something I've learned - your bills will be due on the same day each month. And for the most part, they will always be the same each month. If you do not receive the paper bill in the mail, you can always log on via the internet or occasionally pay over the phone. That way, you never have to worry about it not arriving to you, or conversely, not getting to the phone / car / etc. company.
Click to expand...

Yup, I keep a list of due dates, and since Im paid weekly, which bills are due on which week. When Friday comes around I look at my notebook and know what is due and how much I owe. I havent been getting all my bills since I havent changed my address for them all yet since my move, but I havent missed any payments. In fact, now that Im not paying rent Im going to submit an extra payment on everything so that Im one payment ahead.

Im glad when my mail doesnt come, as its usually just junk. Reminds me, I need to change my address on my Playboy subscription.
 
#12
Chebass88 said:
Here is something I've learned - your bills will be due on the same day each month. And for the most part, they will always be the same each month. If you do not receive the paper bill in the mail, you can always log on via the internet or occasionally pay over the phone. That way, you never have to worry about it not arriving to you, or conversely, not getting to the phone / car / etc. company.
Click to expand...


My recurring bills - electric, insurance, mortgage, cable etc - are all predictable so I just set up recurring payments electronically with my bank. And since the bills are all delivered by email anything that comes USPS is a one off. Spend a couple of minutes once a month dealing with those. It's so nice not to have to sit down once a week and do the bills.

The USPS is incredibly reliable and cheap but given the sheer volume of mail they handle mistakes do get made.
 
#14
Bongolation said:
The three-week vacation hold would have taken some fairly complex, multi-level screwups of the address.

.
Click to expand...
Actually it would be a simple mistake. Such as writing 3186 instead of 3168 on the vacation hold order. In which case that delivery point would have been pulled from the automated sort plan for the route and the mail would not even leave the office. Most of the time something like that happens the route's regular carrier will notice the name(s) and catch the mistake. However there are times when a route has a new carrier who has not learned the names or the regular carrier is on leave (vacation, sick or jury duty) and the substitute carrier(s) will just go by the address.
 
#15
This route has many carriers and many problems, though nothing like this before. No one stays here long. I have no idea why. There may be three carriers a week and I don't think any carrier has been here more than about eight months.

This is the curse of my life, it seems. In San Francisco, I lived in such a steep and difficult neighborhood that the route was actually a punitive assignment for probationary screw-ups they wanted to encourage to quit. Eventually, a carrier who was a serious amateur athlete took it as a PT challenge and delivery improved.
 
#16
You have an intimate knowledge about the reputation of the mail route in your neighborhood, how it was used to eliminate employees, and the history of those who delivered it. Could you use one of your sources of that info to get insight to what happened here?

-Mike
 
#17
The routes are set up to be as close to 8 hours of daily work load as possible. That means many stations have left over segments of a route. Say a station has 83 and not 88 hours of work per day. To get those extra five hours delivered the daily work load on the other routes in the unit is predicted and whoever is short of work that day is assigned to carry route segments to bring his assignment up to 8 hours. So in effect many streets do not have a regular carrier but mail is carried by the first available body, by a carrier who is angry and feels like he is doing extra work for free. The service truly works on a faster you work, the more work you are assigned basis

At the moment because of where we are in the automation cycle few routes are open and few carriers are moving to other routes. We bid on vacated routes by seniority. Another thing could be your carrier is ill, on military reserve call up, or is an acting supervisor and none of the career substitutes have chosen to put in a temporary bid on that route so they work it when forced to and choose an easier route when another carrier goes on vacation.

It has been a while since anybody has been hired and probation only last for 90 days. It is almost impossible to make a disciplinary assignment as seniority trumps all in duty assignments in order to force the service to make all routes as fair as is possible. Meaning they can try to make a route easy or hard for a girlfriend but then a senior carrier will just bump her off and take the easy assignment, and if you make it hard for a senior he will just bid to the next open route.

The way you described the situation I am reasonable sure there was a vacation hold for your address, the actual customer or the phone agent filling out the form wrote the wrong number
 
#19
MJ5150 said:
Is that what my mailman friend refers to as pivoting? He's always telling me how him and another guy have to pivot to another route to help an older and slower co-worker.

-Mike
Click to expand...
Yes, although I learned when we came online that postal slang is different in the different districts. In theory the computer says your friend is short 20 minutes that day so he has to go somewhere else and deliver what the computer says is 20 minutes on the street on that route. Often we fall into overtime doing it because the computer prediction is based upon the speed of the last tested assigned carrier and going to a location at a different time of the day may mean running into more traffic then there was at the tested time.
 

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