In some ways, the USPS amazes me…mail gets delivered to my house almost everyday without me having to pay to receive it. However, at times, the inability to do the simple task of delivering my mail annoys me. A few weeks ago I noticed that our normal carrier wasn’t delivering the mail and mail was coming at odd times (like 5:30 pm) when it normally comes around noon everyday (I can hear the letter carrier put the mail in the mailbox that’s next to our front door). Then I noticed the replacement carrier not wearing a uniform and then was confused about where the mailbox was on a neighbor’s house. This neighbor’s house has the same layout as ours and the front door/mailbox are in the same spot. Not rocket science to find it. We also started getting mail for someone else that was in a different zipcode about 10 miles away; same street address, different street. On Tuesday, I had it with this mess as we got mail for both our neighbors (one on the same street, one on a different street) and called to file a complaint. Yesterday, we got a note in our mailbox from our normal carrier; she was on vacation for a few weeks and apologized for the mess that was created. She said that the replacement carrier is the worst she has seen in her 16 years with the USPS. I’m glad that the regular carrier is back and maybe mail delivery will be back to normal.
This isn’t my first run in with the USPS. When I lived in Oregon, I moved once and kept getting mail forwarded to me that wasn’t mine. After a bunch of calls, I found out that the way the coding for forwarding worked was based on some combination of part of the street address and zipcode; someone else’s forwarding got confused with mine. I finally stopped my forwarding order to fix that problem. Next, I didn’t have any furniture in the front of my house and after about 8 months of getting mail without problems, the post office stopped delivering mail completely. The letter carrier thought the house was vacant. I got it started again, but then it stopped again for the same reason. I got tired of that. Luckily I finally moved and didn’t have to deal with that again.
How hard can it be to sort mail and deliver it? Must be harder than I think.