Kristin has lived in her L.A. apartment for five years, but as long as she’s lived there she’s never been confronted with the kind of sassiness she’s just been confronted with on the part of the United States Postal Service. She tells Consumerist her apartment is part of a four-plex with no locked lobby, and her door has a clearly marked, obviously quite old mail slot marked “letters.” What could possibly go in there? [More]
Your mailbox is going to feel a bit empty starting next summer, as the United States Postal Service is going to cut Saturday delivery in a move designed to save the agency $2 billion a year. Partly because it didn’t want to continue waiting around for Congress to do something to help dig it out of its financial hole, beginning Aug. 1 the weekends will be mail-free, although packages will still be delivered on Saturdays. [More]
Ultimately, we’re all responsible for our own fates. That’s what David learned when an important tax document arrived in his mailbox with his Social Security number and name exposed. It didn’t come in a “sorry we damaged your mail” envelope like most mangled letters do, so he was suspicious. Maybe someone had ripped it open to get his info. Maybe a postal employee had mangled it, but forgot to put it in an apologetic envelope. Whatever had happened, surely the postal service, credit bureaus, and police would have answers for him, right? Right. [More]
The overwhelming crappiness of FedEx Smartpost as a shipping method is a frequent topic around here. But why is it so terrible? We could have guessed that a partnership between ostensible rivals FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service might not work so well, but one reader with inside knowledge about why it’s so terrible reached out and shared their knowledge with us. The basic reason? The labels are terrible, and confuse the equipment. [More]
Jason didn’t say whether his mail carrier’s name happens to be Newman, but he was pretty surprised to receive most of his mail from June on October 1st. That’s understandable. Usually you’d expect to receive that stuff at least by the end of July. If it were just ad flyers, he wouldn’t be annoyed, but the giant bundle of misdirected mail contained important things like bills. Good thing he wasn’t expecting any checks. [More]
H. lives on a rural mail route, and her mailbox is secure, with a lock and a slot just big enough to slide letters through. When a package containing an expensive camera lens went missing recently, she learned that her mail carrier had put the package in the “parcle box.” The what? Oh, the unused but not secure mailbox on her street that some neighbor wrote “parcel box” on a long time ago. H. had no indication that her package had been placed in the box until the mailman left her a note about it. By then, the box had already been stolen. The post office, for its part, insists that the package was delivered as addressed. [More]
When Chris received this package in the mail, he assumed that his mail carrier had crammed it in his mailbox with overwhelming force. That wasn’t the case, though. The truth is more mysterious and much weirder. [More]
Anthony’s faith in the U.S. Postal service was clearly misplaced. He dropped off a package with a prepaid label at a local post office, with the misguided belief that it would enter the shipping system, and that the delivery confirmation barcode on the label would show the package’s path through the mails. That’s not what happened. What happened was that the prepaid label, with no package attached, was returned to Anthony’s house. Where’s the package? No one knows. But it’s not the post office’s problem, since there’s no proof that he even mailed it in the first place. [More]
Victoria mailed some textbooks worth $275 in what seemed like secure packaging. The postal service returned the packaging to her, but the textbooks were never seen again. She opted not to insure the package, figuring that no one could do that much damage to heavy hardcover textbooks. She was overly optimistic. [More]
The outlook is grim for the U.S. Postal Service, with plans to close thousands of post offices and cutting processing centers, but the inevitable is being postponed for now. [More]
“I’m operating right now with a week’s worth of cash,” Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe told Senators on Tuesday. After the Postmaster General went to Capitol Hill to pass the hat around, the White House announced it’s a few weeks away from developing a plan to save the USPS from bankruptcy. [More]
Before it even has a chance to deliver the next letter to Santa, the US Postal Service could be bankrupt. The USPS might not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment it owes this month. Lawmakers will hear all about it and ideas for staving off default in a Senate committee hearing today called “U.S. Postal Service In Crisis: Proposals To Prevent A Postal Shutdown.” [More]
If you have a regular 9-5 job, one way to be sure that you receive your personal deliveries safely is to have them sent to the office. Unless you’re reader A. and her husband. They work for two different small companies, and have discovered that any items mailed to them at work end up in someone else’s hands. Both A. and Mr. A have been told that all mail addressed to the office is company property, and belongs to either whoever finds it first, or management. This seems wrong to them. [More]
Many of you have been following the saga of the Minnesota woman who was charged with animal cruelty after trying to ship a four-month old poodle-schnauzer mix puppy to Atlanta via air mail. The latest update: Officials in Minneapolis have shot down her appeal to get the puppy back. [More]
The woman who tried to ship a four-month-old puppy from Minneapolis to Atlanta in an airless box using Priority Mail earlier this week reportedly would like the dog back. Will her request be granted, or will the puppy be made available to the numerous people all over the country who actually know how to keep an animal alive and have inquired about adopting him? [More]
If you send out a lot of physical mail, you probably won’t mind stumbling upon a way to shave 10 percent off your postal expenses. One labor-intensive yet effective method to trim your stamp expenses is to hook up with a stamp and coin collector shop and buy old postage at a discount. [More]
A piece of registered mail left Hong Kong on December 7th, and is on its way to Michael in Manhattan. While it has reached the correct city, tracking information shows that the envelope is currently doing laps from Queens to Manhattan. Michael just wants to show up at a post office and pick the darn thing up, but no one can intercept it or even tell him where it is until his neighborhood mail carrier attempts to deliver it at least once. [More]
An anonymous reader says credit bureaus can’t keep her identity separate with that of another woman with the same last name who used to live in her building. The reader says the bureaus won’t resolve her complaint, insisting the other woman has to take the initiative to fix the errors. [More]
