How is your mail delivery?
 

I saw this in the news yesterday, and although I don't live in Iowa, I'm seeing some of the same things.

https://www.kcrg.com/2024/03/26/weve-been-stonewalled-no-answers-usps-missing-mail/

Late last year, my wife sent her son a birthday card. It was returned as undeliverable. He lives in an apartment with roommates, maybe his name isn't registered with the post office. I don't know.

A while ago, a mailman stuck a card on the inside of our mailbox door, with my last name, and my wife's last name before she married me (going on 6 years now). The only things she gets with that last name on it are catalogs and junk mail. I drew a line though that name. Maybe that's when the trouble started.

She ordered something recently off eBay, tracking said 'delivered'. No package. 3 weeks later, the package mysteriously appeared on our doorstep.

I ordered something off eBay in mid February, about 2 weeks after I got it the seller messaged me, asking if I got it. I did, but tracking never updated to 'delivered', so eBay wasn't going to pay him. I confirmed I received it ( I had already left him positive feedback the day I received it ), and I guess he got paid, he hasn't contacted me again.

I get three tax forms from one entity. Two were delivered, one returned, and they called me asking if I moved. Nope. Had to go to their office to pick up the third form.

We get reminder post cards for the dog licenses. Only got one. No idea what happened to the other one.

Anyone else have similar stories?

yes

most interesting is i have a new mail man that runs from house to house with his arms flapping like a bird. he yells “he was just laying there dead” over and over and over and in between laughs like a crazy person. the other day i watched him do this at every house as he went down my street. maybe turrets or something? most peculiar mama.

USPS has been terrible since Trump installed a big donor, Louis DeJoy to fix the postal system back in 2020. $1.2 million gets you a cushy job dismantling the USPS I guess.

No problems.

I rarely use USPS, UPS, or Fed Ex.

Recently I have had 2 separate ebay orders go to a town near me and then the tracking would update to "missent" and I would receive the items a few days later. One item left the nearby town and went all the way up to Evansville, Indiana before returning back to my area. I have never had issues like this before. These items were sent through USPS by the way.

Sent from my SM-S916U using Tapatalk

The latest mail person out here in the country has a permanent scowl. I'm supposing doing the job interferes with online time, especially since there is no internet out here.

We have one of those "community mailboxes" that serve around 12 homes. Each box is about 18" d x 8" w x 6" h. What mail doesn't fit is supposed to be dropped on the porch.

Our new guy seems to make a hobby out of crushing things down to where they fit in the mailbox. I had a soft cover book completely folded in half, shoved into the box the other day. It's like they don't care.

This was over 10 years ago now but I shipped a 3.0L crank to the buyer in Canada and along the way, someone opened up the tube, pulled out the crank and then shipped the tube to its destination open on one end and of course empty. The tube was over 3/8 thick fiberboard and the ends were steel plates with teeth that you pressed into the tube and the bit into the fiberboard so the only way to get them out was to destroy them... they couldn't back out as the teeth just bit more into the tube. So I had to buy another one from a local shop and ship that via UPS.

To the OP, yes, mail is extremely slow these days.

Had a number of two day express USPS boxes disappear into the ether

We live in north Georgia and my brother in law lives in North Carolina . It's a 5 hour drive . Four weeks ago we mailed him a birthday card . We mailed it a week before his birthday . It took 3 weeks to get there . Just pathetic .

2 times I have bought registration tags for 2 of my cars and got nothing back. I called AAA and they said yes you are paid up. They (AAA) will kindly print out new for 27 bucks. I just went a year w/o the current sticker on one car and now the same for another.

On the first one I called the DMV. They said they got the payment and even told me from what office my tag was mailed on what date. I guess the mailman sells them.

Rural mail delivery here. Gal with a rhd 15 year old Honda Odyssey drops it off.

Never any problems.

I would say if everything was fine until then...perhaps so.

My USPS here is fantastic!

I'm on a first name basis with my carrier.

We've chatted about car and motorcycle stuff.

He gets a $50 at Christmas time with a nice Thank You card.

Last week I left for him this pin from my late stepfather, who was an area Postmaster for 12 years........along with a copy of my late step-father's obituary, which highlighted his many civic, business, and military achievements.....so the pin would perhaps carry more meaning for him.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1711560785.JPG

Canada Post up here of course. We are about 6 miles from the post office. The biggest problem we had over the 43 years since we built was Canada Post reorganizing all the rural routes. I believe we had three changes of address within 10 years.
Now however all is well. If we get something too big for our mailbox at the end of our 1/4 mile long driveway, our driver comes to the house and knocks on the door.
Of course not many people use the mail these days, so he doesn't have a lot to do.

Best
Les

Paid a bunch of bills a few weeks ago. No problem with any of it, except the credit card bill got lost.

Mail gets stolen regularly around here

My post earlier of 'never any problems' might be due to having over 90% of my mail as incoming.
The last book of 20 stamps I bought was over a year ago....so not much outgoing mail.

I use my credit unions bill-pay online for all bills.

That's a neat pin. My father delivered mail for a time, before he got a job as a mechanic. My grandfather also delivered mail. My grandfather's brother had a rural route, started when he was 17, delivered mail for over 50 years. His son also was a rural letter carrier for many years. Somewhere in the basement I have letter carrier ID cards or something like that from my father and grandfather. It's been years since I looked at them. Maybe they were union cards.

My father's second cousin was postmaster in La Crosse for 12 or 13 years.

I doubt I've used even 5 stamps in the past 5 years ... and haven't written a check in nearly 20. I don't even use my CU's bill pay very often ... mebbe 10 times ... ever.

Doesn't everyone use Bitcoins :D?

Oh yeah ... my mail carrier is like clockwork .... she's a sweetie has been mine for years .... many years :)!

^^^
How do you pay bills?

I save my Bitcoins for TB.

We have a new mail lady, kind of a cute blonde. Seems like we get a new carrier every few months. So, you never get to know them like you did in years past.

Our UPS guy has been super steady for as long as I can remember.

Years back, it was a very good job to have. Security and great pay.
Now, there is a large turn-over of their jobs....around here anyway.

The delivery vehicles are their own, and the routes are long.

Automatic drafting from my checking acct. or via my debit card (most are autopay) ... it's my only card, and I use it to get cash back (real cash in my pocket ... folding money)....

For using at TB :)

My mail carrier is good. However, an envelope that would take a day or two to be delivered, can now take up to 5 days. And this is Honolulu delivery!

So he's getting pretty good at his hobby, huh?

I recently got a bill in the mail from a doctor's office. Stamped in red ink was something about being 90 days overdue/third billing/last warning/etc. Weird. I never got the first two. Things like this make me wonder: was it the doctor's office/billing company? USPS? Certainly not my mailbox, as it's one of those lockable ones about the size of a banker's box.

We get excellent service from our postal folks. I've got no complaints.

Same here. Only about 3000 people in this town and I think that helps. Same lady has brought my mail forever.

I don’t have much problem with our mail, as I don’t send anything, in my incoming is usually small car parts from eBay or Amazon.

Speaking of the USPS, their tracking sucks. Every time I look at the updates, it says received at carrier facility. It says that for every update, but it gives no location. Then one day, it shows up

USPS tracking is spot on for me. I see it enter the sysyem, leave, then reach the distribution center here, then on to my local PO, then out for delivery .... my sweetie puts it in my box around 11 am :).

The dude running the USPS now is from around here ... just a very rich, political appointee, totally out of his element .... and typical :(.

Yeah .... that's the guy :(

The mail system makes no sense to me.
We do have mail carriers that live in the area and know the customers, but for some reason they rotate people from out of town every couple of months to work in the PO.
There used to be two slots for sending main, "local" and "out of town." The local mail never left town. Now, I get my water bill from the Village water department 1 1/2 miles away and it is postmarked Columbus, Ohio - 70 miles from here. It goes from here, 70 miles to Columbus, gets postmarked, then 70 miles back here, then it's sorted and delivered. It system seems incredibly inefficient to me.

It is always entertaining to go to the Post Office; the employees are a study in slow motion and incompetence - and I am being nice. We regularly get mail for neighbors stuffed into our box. We deliver it of course as do they when they get our mail. The "mail lady" is definitely one brick short of a load.

For me choosing a carrier is a bit like Russian roulette. USPS is like having two rounds in the cylinder.

I got to know one of the mail carriers in our town and she said the motor carriers get their mail sorted and put in order during the early am by other people.
She said if you get your next door neighbors mail...chances are it happened to the next few houses also.

So now I just put it back into the mailbox and put the flag up....so that they are aware of the mistake.

Everyone beatching about complaint this and complaint that.

shrug

Mailing a letter a full 3000 miles across the states for 60 cents or whatever it is now is a bargain.

It's a service, don't like it don't use it.


and get off my lawn!

Most of the time I have no issues but let me explain:

I almost never use stamps or go to the post office to mail anything.
If I send something by mail, it is usually UPS. (I like the tracking numbers)
All my bills are paid electronically, received. They are paid thru my bank. ( I like the record keeping).


What I get in the mail isn't allot. So I have no issue. However, my youngest is getting married this June and I never received my invitation. So, stuff can happen.

Yet when I ordered parts for my telescope with a "signature only" delivery USPS (I had no choice in shipper) left $3 grand of optics sitting on the ground next to my mailbox.

^^^ I had a similar thing happen with a $2K package left in my mailbox that I was supposed to sign for.... U started a thread here too ... imagine that ;)!

The tracking was spot on, it was safe to leave it in my 'hood, and as she drove away, I checked the tracking update... "customer signed for package" (or something to that effect)... ummm, no I did not :(. But she's cute, friendly, and been my carrier for prolly a dozen years now ....

She can walk on my lawn any time :D

Weird followup to this story.
Monday I received an email from eBay saying "new estimated delivery - May 6"
Tuesday I received an email "order delivered"

Now again, I received this back at the end of February.

Looking at the tracking, it's like they created a dummy tracking label. The seller shipped it Feb 21. On May 4th, it was in New York City, May 5th in St Paul, May 6th out for delivery, but "no access to mailbox", and then delivered on May 7. I didn't receive a second one.

I tried bringing up the tracking info today to reference for this post, and the page won't load. Works fine for other numbers.

I mostly have good luck, the local post office has awesome employees.

I did send a package to a customer a few months ago and the box was trashed, all the packing and lots of parts were missing- cost me several hundred dollars. God only knows what happened to that poor box. That is not normal, I send quite a few packages with no problems except maybe delays.

I will second the notion that less than a dollar gets a letter to anywhere in the country. I have mildly wondered how far a dude could move a letter for that much money; minimum wage gives you only so many minutes of travel, how much gas can you buy. I figure maybe you could take it a few miles? I know, I know that they lose money, but fun to think about it.