Why doesn't someone just buy them a Segway?! Or better yet, a Vespa. Then they could just weave back and forth across the street to deliver the mail and be able to out-ride any vigilantes in the Concord Creek development.

He paid HOW MUCH for a mailbox and stand???

Sue the Post Office. If you have enough disposable income for something as frivolous as a $1300 Mailbox and Lamp, you have enough to afford a lawyer.

Why would anybody deliberately put their mailbox on the wrong side of the street? I'm trying to think of any possible advantages to this, and coming up empty.

Headline should have read: "Whiny prima donna forgets to check regulations about mailbox installation and installs box against regulations. Now wants special treatment."

Better check with the city for the lamppost before installing that as well.

Yeah, what faust1200. I don't want to pay extra for stamps so that this guy won't have to walk a few feet.

@ahwannabe: His mailbox is in front of his house, but there's some kind of regulation requiring all the mailboxes in new developments to be on one side of the street.

As soon as I am finished laughing at that guy having to pay $1300 for that fugly mailbox and a matching lamppost, I will maybe start to think about who is stupider in this case. But for now: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

$1300 for a lampost and a mailbox????? I mean, yeah, I can see that cost if they had to run electrical wires out to the lamppost and set it in concrete and all. Why the heck didn't he ask first? It varies by community. Some carriers will make two passes on a street, some won't. If the mail is all sorted out by odd and even sides of the street, and there's a box out of place, it'll screw up the whole works.

On my road, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, but I stuck mine on the same side that everyone else's was on, even though it meant a grueling 8 foot walk across the street.

I live in a rural area, and it's rocky, so half the mailboxes are in a 5 gallon bucket filled with concrete, so if they're on the wrong side, you just move 'em across the street. The other half of them are nailed to trees..so, ditto on moving them. My rural mailbox is bungi-corded to the bridge that goes over the stream at the end of my driveway.

I hope he didn't spend too much money on his mailbox, because every year the kids come by with baseball bats and go mailbox smashing. One guy down the road thought he'd show off his wealth by constucting a beautiful mailbox from hand-soldered copper. Well, it got the bat too. My $5 mailbox...I beat it back into shape with a hammer and screwed the post back together, and it's good for another year.

ahwannabe, it's not that they put it on the opposite side - the postal service is saying that all mailboxes need to be on one side of the road, and they happen to live (and therefore place their mailbox) on the wrong side. Nobody told them, and most of the other subdivisions in the area had mailboxes on both sides of the road.

Oh, and I forgot to add...the solution is easy. Buy a $5 mailbox, a $20 post, and one of those "easy up" bases with the long spike in it. Move it to the other side of the street, push it in, and there you go, problem solved. So the lamp-post is on the wrong side...that's life.

In my development we didn't have a choice on the mailbox nor the location of the mailbox. The type, style and color are all dictated in the covenants.

I don't think he had a choice regarding the postal hardware. In the article:

To build in the subdivision, the Conways had to agree to pay $1,300 for a lamp post and matching mailbox.

The article also mentions that everyone else in the area has a traditional mailbox in front of their homes, so the developer and the Conways are a bit surprised by a seemingly arbitrary decision from the local postmaster. Returning to the article:

But if the Thiensville post office decided on one-side-of-the-street boxes for Concord Creek, [the USPS spokesman] said, it should have informed the developer.

I'm guessing there's some good, old fashioned ass-covering going on here. The postmaster forgot to inform the developer and knows it, and don't you just bet there's some even more onerous USPS regulations covering such a lapse.

But shouldn't the Conways be prodding the developer to dig up and relocate the mailbox on the other side of the street? If there was a mistake made, it was between the USPS and the developer.

Also, I think Mr. Conway is a bit of jackass and acting like a spoiled toddler shouting I DON' WANNA! I DON' WANNA! WAAAAH.

Talk about lazy postman. They should come deliver mail in NYC. They would all have heart attacks. Lazy f**ks.

@dantc:
My thoughts exactly. I am suprised that the developer has not done more to remedy the situation. From what I can tell from the picture, the development isn't completed yet. With more families moving in, this will be an ever bigger issue.

@y2julio:
No doubt. Where I live, the mailmen drive their little trucks from the post office to the area where they deliver. They walk the entire neighbourhood whether the sun can fry an egg on the street or snot freezes as soon as it leaves your nose. They go back to the truck, reload with mail and continue on. While I have to agree that this guy should've checked on the code before spending that obscene amount of money on a mailbox, the mailmen in that area are incredibly lazy. An endurance test between a mailman and a cop would be entertaining.

"Postal regulations require new developments to place mailboxes on one side of the street so mail carriers don't need to venture far from their trucks. Several nearby developments have mailboxes on both sides of the street."

This isn't correct... According to the article,

"if the Thiensville post office decided on one-side-of-the-street boxes for Concord Creek ... it should have informed the developer."

And that was a quote from a postal service spokesman. So either the developer didn't tell the homeowner where to put the mailbox, or the post office never informed the developer. Somebody dropped the ball, but it wasn't necessarily the homeowner.

Does anybody see any mailboxes on the OTHER side of the street? And he was there FIRST and the first to erect a mail box?

Apparently the Post Office wants to specify the side of the street, too.

Or the acting Postmaster is a bit of a jerk.

That image is the perfect expression of the greed, stupidity and wastefulness of sprawl.

I'm envisioning a new service for people with way too much money to spend on their mail:

Every day, a courier stops by the mailbox that the USPS delivers to, picks up the mail, and delivers it to your special mailbox. As a value-added feature, they can optionally discard junk mail for you.

Isn't it the job of mail carriers to deliver the mail? Regardless of what side of the street the mailbox is on? Is that really so much of an issue? As much as I dislike, suburban sprawl Mc-Mansion housing developments, this is pretty asinine of the post office.

I, personally, have no use for the post office. My mother (and all her neighbors) once got a note in their mailboxes one winter that said if there was too much snow in front of the mailbox that prevented the mail carrier from reaching the mailbox from the truck, no mail would be delivered. I got into a fight with my mail carrier in my first apartment because she was actively destroying tenants' mail by crumpling into a little ball before sticking it in our mailboxes. (At the time, I had a Netflix subscription too). My current mail carrier doesn't bother to close my mailbox (which opens from the top) in driving rain or snow. My opinion of postal employees is really rather low.

WWKD: What Would Kramer do?

And why exactly do we still have USPS?

@joopiter:

Do you live in NYC and is your mailman a fat guy named Newman?

This brings up a beef I have had for a long time.

I live in a suburban area that is undergoing rapid development. New housing areas all have community mailbox pods, with anywhere from one to two dozen mailboxes per pod. Residents have to walk from 15 to a couple hundred yards to collect their mail.

However, on the next street over from my development, for example, is an older neighborhood, where the mailboxes are at the end of each driveway, on BOTH sides of the street. And farther over into town, mailboxes are physically attached to each house right next to the front door!

My question is this: Why am I being treated as a second class citizen for living in a newer house? My postage stamps cost just as much as everyone else, and the people who send me mail pay just as much as the people who send mail to the folks who live in the older neighborhoods. Yet the service I receive for that identical cost is demonstrably below that of other residents in the area.

There is something inherently un-American about this. I'm surprised nobody has yet filed a class-action discrimination lawsuit!

Years ago while living in Milwaukee I moved my mailbox 4 feet. Not knowing about the regulations either. But since it made it easier for the mail carrier (it was up 5 steps on the porch and I moved it down to the sidewalk. Well, Postal bureaucracy prevailed and I didn't get mail for two weeks. When I inquired, I was told about the regulation.

So, I installed a new mail box in the original location but the type where there was just a narrow slot. The mailman had to "feed" the mail a few pieces at a time.

Gotta love the postal system.

Disclosure: I delivered mail summers during college.

The reason that the post office has these regulations is not because carriers are lazy. It has nothing to do with that at all. It isn't a consideration.

It's all about efficiency. There are two overriding concerns here: (1) customers like getting their mail early and (2) mail carriers can only go so fast (spare me the jokes; it's reality that carriers can't run their entire route from a physical fitness stand point and safety).

Regarding (1), you may or may not be surprised, but a incredibly large number of people are home all day (retired, homemakers, out-of-work, students), and they want their mail ASAP.

By requiring the boxes on one side of the street, mail carriers can process their mail much, much faster.

By catering to the location of each mail box, up stairs, behind doors, up drive ways, the mail slows, way, way down.

My town had a mix of old houses and new developments. The old houses were "grandfathered" in to the system, but the new developments had to have curbside boxes, and where feasible, on the same side of the road (nobody is required to cross busy roads to get to their mail boxes).

I was a floater covering for people on vacation so I did all sorts of routes. I could do two or three times the volume of mail when in new developments. Old neighborhoods where I had to go up flights of stairs, find oddly placed mail boxes (two front doors, where's the box? By the garage), particularly in winter, people wouldn't get their mail until the sun was coming down.

If you don't follow the rule, say put your mailbox on the wrong side of the street, then the entire system is screwed up and everyone gets delayed on the entire route.

Think of it this way: if the carrier gets to sit in the truck, he just has to reach over to his left (he sits on the right), and can go from box to box in seconds.

One box on the wrong side of the road requires the carrier to stop the engine, curb the wheels (roll aways are a huge deal), grab the mail, watch out for traffic, cross, put the mail in the box, run back to the truck, start the engine up, and head out. Imagine if the carrier has to do that on every other house?

This impacts other factors, like overall expenses (gas, more carriers required, etc.) and then hits the consumer with higher stamp prices.

For what? Because one guy and/or the developer didn't check where mailboxes were supposed to be placed.

"The Conways acknowledge that they did not check with the post office before putting up their mailbox. But they don't understand why the one-side-of-the-road rule would suddenly be applied to their subdivision, or why no one ever told them about it."

That's unbelievably stupid. A $1300 mailbox and they don't think to check the regulations? Ignorance of the law/regulation is no excuse. They should have checked.

When the developer began building, I can guarantee he checked various zoning requirements and regulations. He didn't build and make a stink when he found out that he was in violation of the zoning rules for the neighborhood. He wouldn't tell the inspector, "why didn't you tell me I couldn't put in a water treatment plant???" You check first.

Same thing here. If they're going to install a mailbox, they should have checked on where it needed to be placed.

Heck, we have a "rural" carrier here even though we live in the middle of the burbs.

It's so bad here that if someone parks in front of your mailbox you don't get your mail.

Instead the person who parked there gets a little message on their car saying that the mailperson can't get out of their vehicles to deliver the mail, and since they're parked in front of the mailbox the mail is undeliverable.

What I don't understand is that if the mailperson has to get out to put the message under the windshield wiper, why can't they just put the mail in the mailbox.

I guess hoping they stay open past 4 AND getting out of their vehicles is a bit too much to ask.

i had something similar *nearly* happen to me. we moved in to a newly-constructed home in an established neighborhood. we bought a regular ol' mailbox and attached it to the house near the front door, after seeing that all the other houses on our street had their mailboxes attached near their entrances or had built-in mail slots. i then called the local post office and asked if there was anything i needed to do to establish service, since the building was new. i was told that we should have installed a mailbox on a post near the curb - even though we'd be the only address with such a mailbox. somehow the carrier has seen fit to put our mail in our mailbox anyway.

@zingbot: Exactly. I think the picture turned me off of this guy's "plight" before I even started reading.

In my old neighborhood, we used to get the mail delivered into our boxes attached to our house. Suddenly, the postal service decides that they don't want to do that anymore, and they go install ugly grey and black mailboxes next to everyone's driveway, on their property. I didn't live there much after that, so I don't know what ever came of that, but I was a little surprised that they thought they could just come and do something like that.

I'm absolutely on the side of the postmaster. First of all, I don't know about what goes on in New York, but mail carriers in Wisconsin (where I live) and Illinois (where I grew up) are fit as hell, and work their asses off to get their routes finished before 7 P.M. (a friend of mine did this for a summer in college, and was exhausted every night). Secondly, this homeowner's prickishly irrational attitude is beyond moronic: hey dude, next time you plan on installing a $1300 mailbox (?!), might make sense to ask about regulations first. You're a big boy, you can do it.

Hmm, or maybe I should take that approach the next time I go to a fast food drive-up: instead of driving right next to the speaker, I'll instead park on the other side of the lot and wait for someone to walk over to me to take my order. Hey, it's my right, and it's all about me!

Maybe you mean "the Conways' concrete stance," "the Conways' calls" and "the Conways' mail." Unless people really do call John "the Conway." (In which case, wherefore is this Conway different from all other Conways?)

Both groups are being lazy. Why not stick the mailbox in the middle of the street and compromise.

If he can afford a $1300 mailbox, perhaps he can afford to move the thing across the street?

This isn't a subdivision-only thing. When we built our rural house 5 years ago the same rule applied. All new houses have to let the post office know that they exist. When you fill out the paperwork, there is a portion dedicated to where you want the mailbox. This must be approved by the local postmaster. Then you can put the box up. Perhaps he simply felt the extra time to stick that X on the form wasn't worth the time.

Then again, often in subdivisions it is the developer's responsibility to notify the postal service of the new homes/addresses. Maybe this guy would have better luck suing the developer for not providing the correct information to him.

Sorry, not much sympathy here.

Wait a second ... he wrote his Congressman (according to the full article) about this? What a colossal jackass.

Folks you are forgetting this is the us postal service you are talking about. These people sent a letter back to me saying the reciever had move left no forwarding address, the reciever was a damn hospital. Guess what, 5 years later its still there. I say both parties are at fault here.

This guy is at fault for not getting it straight from the postmaster. If only because my experience with any postmaster has been bad and I don't mean in a Cliff Cleavin sort of way.

I live on a rural route, and the postmaster at the local post office has sent several warnings to me about clearing snow and making sure the approaches are clear. I can deal with that, when I'm home. But when we receive 6" of snow between 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., and the rural route carrier drops the mail off around 4:00, you don't have to be a genius to know that it's not getting cleared until I actually get home.

Again, right on cue, I received another warning about pot holes in the approach. The pot holes are clearly in the road and not on the approach, but I suspect that my mail will be held for a couple days until I convince the road commission to come out and fill them.

Give some people a uniform and some authority and they'll goose-step all over you.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night...

I worked in a post office for about 4 months and I know what goes on there, and think a lot of you are being a bit hard on them about this.

Current rural/suburban regulations are in place to push for less postal workers in a area (and thus less in the entire town.) That is why they are pushing curbside mailboxes on one side of the street, so that one mailman in a truck can cover a LOT more ground.

Case in point a truck route can cover the distance of 2-3 walking routes. I know this, as I have done all three types (rural, truck, and walking) and walking route where always the shortest amount of houses, but the longest damn hours. Rural routes tend to be a mix (mostly because you could end up driving miles between a mailbox) and the normal truck routes tended to cover vast swaths of neighborhoods, but you could make it in sooner and get all of your needed duties done on time which tended to be very hard on walkers due to packages and other stuff.

I can see why they wanted it a certain way. Your legally required to look up postal regulations before doing anything with your mail box, and while on old developments the post office cant force you to change your mailbox, they ARE legally allowed to stop your mail if you make changes to your front or knock down a house and redevelop and do not follow current postal regulations (like how a city can legally force you to add sidewalks to a new development or if you make changes to a old one) Thats not a falsity thats a federal postal law, the same as how after 3 consecutive days of blocked post boxes they can legally withhold mail till you rectify the situation.

The push these days is to reduce cost, and push their current workers to do more. The reasons for this is simple, gas is expensive now (enough to push a lot of offices to switch to alternafuels), and their cost per a postal worker is high, so they want to get the absolute most out of each. This coupled with a sharp decrease in funds from 3rd class postage (circulars and snail spam, the two biggest sources of income for the USPS) plus a need to compete against email has forced a major shift in policy in recent years. This policy relating to where the postal box is, is one thats been in place for at least 10 years now. Im sorry to say, but the guy who spent 1400 for a damn box and lamp has absolutely no legal right in this case, though I suspect they will in the end bend over thanks to pressure when in reality they should be shoving it in this guys face as a example of why you obey laws.

I don't blame the homeowner. His subdivision is pretty clearly at fault here: they should have been communicating with the post office on where the mailboxes need to be and they required that stupid $1300 mailbox (read the damn article, those of you jumping on the incredible cost--yes, it's ridiculous, but he didn't pick it). They should move it, free of cost to the homeowner, and he should suck it up and walk across the road. Alternately, the post office can stop being such bitches and use his new route he drew for them.

@joopiter: Isn't it the job of mail carriers to deliver the mail? Regardless of what side of the street the mailbox is on?

Yes to the first question and no to the second.

The Post Office delivers mail from point to point. They handle logistics - postal customers are responsible for providing a suitable mail receptacle under the current guidelines.

For all the grousing that goes on about the Post Office (and from personal experience, I can tell you that in NYC, a lot of it is justified), they provide a pretty remarkable and efficient means of delivering letters and packages. To abide by their rules before installing a semi-permanent structure isn't too much to ask. You can destroy the efficiency of a mail route by requiring a mail carrier to effectively take a detour every day simply to reach your box - remember that mail carrier vehicles are set up for right-handed delivery of serially sorted material.

You don't build a house without securing a permit and contructing to local code, right? The Post Office is set up to deliver mail efficiently, but only if customers do their part by providing mail receptacles that conform to PO guidelines.

Postal service woes are nothing new, especially if one lives in an apartment complex. I've recently moved into a townhouse group in suburban South Texas, and after attending a college with a pretty good postal system (centralized box and package receiving), I assumed that it would be a simple deal to get any and all mail delivered to me in this setting.

Boy, was I wrong.

I recently ordered a set of Wii cables from MeritLine (thanks Consumerist!), and ended up playing a game of cat and mouse with them. As usual, when the USPS delivers a package to me, they leave me the little pink slip of doom, which means I have to head down to the post office and retrieve my goods. A slight pain in the rear, but nothing substantial.

But when I got there, the cupboard was bare, and my package with not within the walls of the post office. Interestingly enough, the little pink slip said it would be there, and I called them on it. They said to come back again tomorrow. I did. 4 times in the next 2 weeks, to be exact.

Eventually, after being told I would be contacted by postal supervisors 3 times (never heard from them), they eventually found it. It turns out it had been filed under another name, and no one took the time to actually check to see if it'd been misfiled.

I have no love for the USPS. This article just sounds like another example of their pushing arbitrary rules onto people. I'm not saying the $1300 lamppost guy was MENSA material, but in this kind of development, someone should have been a little clearer.

Having worked for the post office I have a pretty good understanding ans a strong opinion on this matter. It is unfortunate that Mr John Conway spent so much on his fancy mailbox. I really mean that. However, this is absolutely and without question his OWN fault. The local postmaster has absolute power as far as dictating where and how the mail is delivered. In many places all over the country mail delivery is being restricted to shared community-style aluminum boxes, so John could consider himself lucky that he gets a curbside mailbox at all. The local PO recently switched our street to curbside instead of porch-style delivery. I admit I was a little miffed about it at first, but its a small inconvenience.

I don't think that very many people understand that the PO is required by law to break even financially year-to-year and that they receive no funding from the government and haven't for a few decades. All too often I hear people complain about the USPS because they assume that by paying taxes they are somehow entitled to cheap mail service. But the fact of that matter is that the costs of operating are increasing, so postage is increasing. They try to combat that by making routes more effcient and what do people do? complain. Then you hear the same people complaining about the rate hikes and junk mail.

Did you know that part of the reason that the US has some of the lowest domestic mail rates and the best mail service in the world is because of the revenue that junk mail generates? Just some food for thought...

Although I love the USPS, every time I've had to deal with them more than just shoving a netflix in a box or opening my mailbox to get it, I get frustrated. I'm glad email and fedex are eating their lunch. A bunch of petty tyrants who don't know the first thing about customer service.

I believe it! I'm in a home built in 1982. After my mail was stolen several times, I wanted to have my mail delivered directly into my garage via a new slot in the garage door. I was told by my mail carrier that because my mail delivery spot was already determined, any deviation from that would mean they would stop delivering my mail and it would either be held at the post office or marked return to sender. I had to get approval to move my mail box from the manager of my local post office who after a couple phone calls, denied my request. I decided not to pursue it further... They seemed to have the mindset that because they controlled my mail, they would win this battle no matter what.

Faust1200..you are exactly right....what idiot installs a mail box without checking with the Post Office, to find out where it properly needs to be installed.
Return to sender!

Maybe some teenagers can step in and rule on the question of the wisdom of spending $1400 on a mailbox. I know what we would have done, back in the day...

Whatever happened to mailmen actually walking their route?
Wouldn't want to have to get your fat ass out of your truck, would you?

I don't care how much somebody spends on their mailbox either, that's their business.

Privatize the mail service.