really done had it with the USPS

This seems to be a job for the USPIS if your local post office and letter carriers are not doing their jobs.

I also check informed delivery every day. But in my case it is quite rare for something not to show up. The most recent time that it happened it came the next day.

It seems to me that your local office and carrier may be providing worse service than is typical across the system.

We often don't get mail delivery at our very rural location, especially when the weather is bad. It's been this way for decades.

As a result, we've gone "paperless" and deal on line with most of the businesses & agencies we use to minimize our dependence on the USPS. It's still a problem for package delivery though. Luckily, we get better service from UPS and Fedex.

About 20 or so years ago, the USPS started going over to machines to check the addresses on the envelopes. I remember getting a letter at work one day in a plastic bag. The only thing readable was the street address. Nothing else was in there. I asked the delivery driver the next day about it. (I handled the mail for our company at the time.) She stated that since they had went over to the machines reading the addresses, it had become more of a problem. She stated that sometimes if the envelope is situated just right, the machine will tear the envelope up. There are also times when an envelope gets stuck in the mailbag. At other times, it may get dropped behind one of the machines. She said that it was going to get worse and it has. Years ago, there were 15 USPS centers around the country that read illegible addresses on your mail. This was back when actual people were reading and sorting your mail. Since machines have taken over, they now only have one facility that reads illegible mail. When the machine can’t read an address, it is automatically sent to this location and a human will read the address. I believe they have 4 seconds to read the address, type it in the system and send it back to the facility requesting the information. I have gone over to doing almost everything on line. Recently I sent a bill from my home outside Cincinnati to Carol Stream, IL. The bill was mailed on the 29th of December. They did not receive it until the 15th of January and the bill was due on the 16th. This was the last bill that I had not yet set up for online bill pay. I kept watching for it to post. It never did so I went ahead and paid the bill online. On the 17th of January, I received notification that they had received the payment. Of course, I had already made the payment online so I actually made two payments. This company’s website is totally horrible so I changed over the payment method to my banks credit card. Since I then had a credit on the old account, I went and bought a gift card to a restaurant for the remaining credit which was for $68.14 or whatever the amount was. My wife didn’t know that you could get a gift card for $68.14. She thought it had to be in round numbers. So that is the reason why the USPS is in such bad shape. Ten years from now, we may not have a postal service in the US. I did read a few weeks ago that Finland is closing down its postal service. They will still deliver packages but no more mail.

I think you are actually remembering about Denmark. While they have not closed down the postal service, they have ceased home delivery of letters by it at the end of 2025.

I can't remember any problems except a torn envelope without contents. I do remember the time that they broke their one month rule and permitted me to have my mail held for two months.

As I understand it, informed delivery shows scans from the local depot. In theory that mail _should_ be delivered that day, but that's not always the case. It still has to make it from the depot that scanned it to your local PO. That may involve another depot, weather delays, etc.

Most times if it's on informed del we'll get it that day, sometimes 1-7 days later, other times not at all. True progress!

I've heard complaints that Informed Delivery is an expensive luxury that the Post Office squandered money on. What I think is true is that the imaging was demanded by congress after the 2001 anthrax mail delivery to the Senate. Once the images were stored the Informed Delivery email service was a small incremental cost.

I remember a time years ago I send my father in law a small package, IIRC it took 6 months to get to him. I mailed it from southeastern PA to his home on northeastern PA, normally a 4 day trip at the most.

Somehow it ended up bouncing around various locations in New Jersey for a few weeks then disappeared.

I filed a complaint and eventually was refunded the cost of the postage, nothing else. I had made a few DVDs for him, no huge loss, but I feel I should have been given something for the DVDs too.

Fast forward 6 months, he gets the package. He tells me the barcode was smudged but the hand written address was perfect. So much for technology, had a human read it, it wouldn't have taken so long.

I also read the article on Danish mail. That got me asking the internet for the cost of mailing a letter. I was shocked to learn it's just under $4 in Denmark. Compare that to the 78 cents we currently pay in the US for a Forever stamp.

That’s what happens when you get old and don’t remember correctly! I knew it was one of the Scandinavian countries.

Oddly, the only places I've ever been in Europe are Sweden, Norway, Iceland.

I went to Stockholm in 1997 for internet dating, and I also made contacts in Norway.

I was a young buck and I remember people being fascinated back then, you're going to a strange country, to meet someone you don't know in person, that's bold. Even jokes how do you know it's a gal?

Anyway, I clearly remember people constantly saying you're going to Switzerland, how was Switzerland, and I couldn't for the life of me understand, it's Sweden, a different place.

I also learned back then, Finland is not considered Scandinavian, by the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Denmark,Norway). Maybe it's changed I never went back. I was also interested in WWII history back then, and Norway was the only of the 3 to resist Germany.

Just got a wrongly delivered cell statement yesterday (Saturday 2/7). How hard is it? I'm delivering 4 pieces of mail, I do a visual check that they all have the same house #? If not, I don't leave the outlier. It's sickening, maddening, and the older I get, the more I'll let it go.

This will definitely reveal my age, but I remember the USPS "penny postcard" you could purchase at the post office for $0.01 including the pre-printed postage stamp. I think the price went up to 2 cents sometime in the 1950's.

Once and a while I will get packages from eBay that are covered in 2-5 cent stamps. They use entire sheets to make the $1-$2 in postage. I always assume its just someone using stamps they find at a estate sale or something.

There are other mail sorting facilities around the country that sort mail. They are not USPS facilities. What they do is sort mail coming from companies that put out a lot of mail. They are pre sorted before they get to the USPS sort facility. The company gets big discounts for the mail being presorted.

That it's fighting city hall like a salmon swimming upstream.

The fact that I got the next door neighbor's T Mobile statement on Saturday, invalidates the above argument. My example for illustration is that if there are only 4 items and this house is 275282, then all 4 pieces of mail should have 275282. If one of the pieces has 275280, then it shouldn't be delivered here. I don't buy the argument that "the mail never stops there are simply too many things and it's too time consuming to look at every piece of mail and it's ok for a day's delivery to disappear who's going to know anyway." This was the thinking in the 1970's when carriers simply took anything that looked interesting. There was a case on Long Island recently where a carrier stole checks, she must have thought it was the 70's.

I accept it, as these things can shave years off of our lives if we let them eat away at us lol

Scam government organization

Not just "Where did it go instead of MY mailbox?", there's also the volume of junk mail to add to a carrier's confusion. Anyone on your carrier's route collecting tons of junk mail to fuel a heat source?

Speaking of carriers, having lived in one location for over forty years, we've had some really good ones, some we were happy to see replaced, and at least one mediocre one who reportedly got arrested.

The reason behind the change of carrier has been less due to retirements and more because the individual carriers "bid for their route" (another mystery how it works even though I've been briefed--about 10 seconds worth--by one of those better carriers).

It's beginning to appear we've just had another change of carriers since it's arriving earlier and we haven't spotted our previous carrier since the Holidays.

Hoping the current carrier is as good as the one before so the subdivision residents don't have to go back to re-delivering mail delivered to the correct house number but wrong street, years ago an all too common occurrence.

The best is when I never receive a bill, then get charged a late fee for not paying it because USPS lost the invoice. Has happened to me many many times over the years. Then I'm stuck trying to fight the fees and get the invoice emailed to me.

Other times, I've paid the bill but the check got lost in the mail. Now I'm stuck fighting the late fees, issuing another check, and stopping payment on the original check due to USPS's wonderful service.

Similar problems, here, johnnatash4. Very unreliable and a great example of en"crap"ification.

We've had no issues over the last 14 years that we've been at this house. We've had problems with Fed-Ex, but USPS has been great. I'd likely take CraigW's suggestion if I were experiencing the problems you've described.

~Angela

Frequently fold mail that clearly says DO NOT FOLD OR BEND.

Delivered our passports to another mailbox many streets away then claimed they had delivered them to our box. Happened to see the mail carrier redelivering them to our box after dark.

Most days there are no issues but our bad days have been really bad

Every once in a while I get a piece of mail addressed to someone else. Question: what to do? Years ago I greatly angered our good long-term mailman by writing on the envelope something like "delivered in error to nnnn". He firmly commanded me not to write on people's mail.

When asked what to do, he advised me just to put it in my mailbox. That worked a few times, but that guy is long retired, and some of the recent ones leave such things in the box. I'm pretty sure at least one of them picked it up, decided it was for a very nearby address which I "should" have walked over myself, and put it back in to make his point.

That actually annoyed me, as it seemed not just a mistake (we all make them) but a malicious action.

We used to have a problem with the mail but we knew, and the mail carrier knew, that the scumbag neighbors that moved into the rental next door as well as their friends a couple of blocks away were stealing mail from the mailboxes. Nobody could actually prove it conclusively (no video doorbells) but everybody knew who it was. They finally moved (I think they may have been evicted) and the loss of mail stopped.

These days the issue is that the mail comes really late. We've lived here for 36 years and the mail used to come at 4:00 PM every day. Now I don't even bother to check until 6:30 PM. Lame. Really lame.

We constantly get someone else's mail, or someone will bring us our mail they received. We have a locked mailbox. Happens several times a month.

We tried to get USPS to correct one of their lost-letter screw-ups and they notified us that:

"Federal law 28 U.S.C. 2680 (b) exempts the Postal Service from liability for claims arising out of loss, miscarriage, or negligent delivery of mail matter, except where insurance is either included in the postage or additional insurance is purchased."

In other words, you're screwed. GREAT BUSINESS MOTTO!

RT

The only folks who haven't destroyed anything on me yet is DHL. Fedex totaled a laptop and UPS smashed a CNC. DHL is great but they are 2 to 3 times the price.

Mine is better, so he has extra time to park the car under shadow for a rest before calling a day.

We occasionally get a neighbors mail but it really isn't much of a problem and we sort it out ourselves.

The exception is one ornery misfit neighbor who heats his house in part with junk mail. If it isn't for him, he throws it in the stove. I imagine he keeps packages addressed to others as well, but we haven't lost any to him yet. Not sure why the USPS inspectors haven't been on his case.

For the last few years we have consistantly been missing mail. The last one a few weeks ago was my registration and sticker for license plate on my car. It showed in informed delivery as being out. It is very obvious what is inside the mail, and as I was afraid it was never delivered. Had to make the trip to the DMV and get a new one issued.
What a pain. I guess someone got a yearly sticker to renew their vehicle, I don't know. If you look real close on the little sticker, it actually has the license plate number on it. But don't think anyone would ever look that close.

Really just tired of the USPS. If I need anything to get somewhere, I FEDEX it. Never had a problem, but you pay the rate.

We constantly get mail for neighbors, but I am just used to walking around and putting it in their mail boxes.

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these carriers from the swift appointment of their appointed rounds" no longer applies. We did not get mail last week when it snowed.

…is a total crap shoot. A few months back I bought something off eBay paying a bit extra for a seller that was located in Philly, hence a quicker delivery. The item went from Philly to the Wilmington DE distribution center, then to a distribution center in Florida, then to another distribution center in Florida, back to the distribution center in Wilmington DE and finally to the Downingtown PO. All told close to three weeks!

The reason is that it still gets processed through the USPS machines for sort verification. A mis sort can happen at either location. It can be anything from a smudged address to an imperfect bar code to a sensor on the unit itself. In reality both sorting machines should be operating identical but that doesn't always happen. The USPS delivers the mail. A problem can then occur by the driver at the boxes on the road. What I am saying is that you are looking at very high speed equipment that has microseconds to do an address lookup. It starts with city, state, and zipcode and works it's way up. There are also bar codes on most mail as it is processed. If the scanners can't recognize a zip or address because they border illegible there will be errors. If the barcodes aren't within spec there will be errors. All these specks have very tight tolerances. So misdirected mail can be a result of a failure anywhere in the process. I suggest you take a tour at a sorting facility to see how much mail is processed and the speed it is done at. I have been there and I have repaired the equipment that is used in those facilities.

I sell some small widgets on ebay. They get shipped in a 6x10 padded envelope using first class parcel (or ground advantage as it's called today).

On several occasions, pirateship, the shipping label partner I use notified me of mislabeling my packages. USPS notified them there's insufficient postage. Their systems indicate the package was sent as priority mail medium box. Obviously this is impossible given the size of the package.

Upon review, pirateship agreed the usps was in error and refunded the additional fee charged. Not sure if they just ate it or if a claim actually went back to the usps. They opined what likely happened was my package got stuck to a medium flat rate box. Label of the box obscured by my now stuck package. As far as usps was concerned, my label was the label on that box.

I suppose this is possible.

Of Pirateship, and wondered. Do you log into an account with them?

I really blew it. I opened a UPS account with some honking discount, residential surcharges waived, and shipped 2 items during the pandemic (when people were willing to pay anything for everything--sold a $28 CD for $180, no joke, and a set of hair clippers for $120 (3X cost).

Due to inactivity I had gotten emails to please login if you want to keep this account. I didn't see the emails so the acct was canceled. Even though UPS said I could get this rate/login back, through various tickets I never could. I have since opened a new account and we ship more, my wife like 3X YTD and me 1X, but the residential and fuel surcharges are there. A $28 package I pay $19, not that great of a discount but it's one of those things, people who pay full price just for whatever reason don't want to take the time to create an online account and get a discount. I cringe at the numbers I overhear when at the UPS Store.

But same thing happened to me twice. UPS charged more claiming my box was larger than it really was. Not only do they gouge by volume, the increase the volume. The density they use is > than the median shipment. But if you were to ship a box of bricks v a box of feathers, same size, yup, you pay even more.

At any rate, 2 Allstate statements for new policies were not delivered yesterday. Anyone reading this is probably thinking man, this guy sure does complain a lot about not getting important stuff. Yep, that's true, and there's not a darn thing I can do about it. But try to imagine how difficult and how unbelievable it is to most, when you try to get these documents replaced. Even US Passports are returned via USPS. That's probably "the" most important document hands down, and subject to this bad delivery. You cannot simply lose those at will. Being a privilege, it can in fact be decided you will not have this replaced as you have "lost" too many. Same with Social Security cards, there is a lifetime limit on replacements. And to be subject to the USPS

@johnnatash4 Pirate ship is the bomb. I've had a relationship with them since 2019. One of the few providers I can recommend and had no issues with. Their customer service is great. They do partner with ups too at discounted rates.

Re allstate.. That's your first problem. I try to do all digital statements so as not to rely on usps. Good point on passports and ss cards.