You know that feeling you get when you see the day’s mail is just a collection of junk — circulars, promotional postcards and credit card offers? One mailman felt that same frustration, only it just made him want to not have to deliver all that stuff and just hide it in his dead mother’s home and a storage facility — about 44,900 pieces of it, all told. [More]
Woman Receives A Birthday Card From Her Parents — That They Mailed In 1969
By 4.8.14
While neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays the couriers of the United States Postal Service from their appointed rounds, someone’s got some explaining to do as to why a birthday card mailed in 1969 just reached its intended recipient, 45 years later. [More]
Neighborhood Residents Can’t Get Mail Delivered Because Of One Chihuahua
By 4.3.14
In the latest round of that ancient fight between man and beast that is the tense relationship mail carriers have with residents’ dogs, a Chihuahua (to be fair, a Chihuahua mix) is effectively holding one neighborhood hostage. The United States Postal Service says the local mail carrier can’t deliver mail to a block in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, because the little dog’s reign of terror makes it impossible to do so. [More]
120,000 Pieces Of Mail Lost In Fiery Inferno After USPS Truck Collides With Another Semi
By 3.5.14
If your long lost lover lives near Orange County, California you might be waiting a little bit longer to finally hear from him/her. A U.S. Postal Truck carrying 120,000 pieces of mail went up in flames yesterday after two big rigs collided on the freeway. [More]
My Post Office Stacks Mailed Packages On Lobby Floor, Shrugs
By 2.3.14
Reader C. visited the post office recently, and what he saw upset him. The good news was that his post office was doing brisk business. It was early in the morning still, but it received a lot of packages. The bad news was that these packages were piled on the floor in the lobby. [More]
Can Postal Service Stay Alive By Cashing Checks & Selling Prepaid Debit Cards?
By 1.28.14
The once-great US Postal Service continues to sink into obscurity and financial oblivion, a destiny that will probably not be saved by all the postage stamp price increases in the world. But could the USPS keep its head above water by offering the financial services that are generally reserved for run-down strip malls? [More]
Canada Post Ends Door-To-Door Delivery In Some Urban Areas, Hikes Stamp Costs
By 12.11.13
It’s nice to know that your neighbors are having similar problems to yours, even if their solutions are different. The current problems of Canada Post that involve pension funding and the expense of dropping mail on every doorstep are very similar to our experiences down here in the United States. Their solution is one that our postal service down here has pondered, too. [More]
Digitizing Your Mail: For When You Can’t Bear For Any Part Of Your Life To Be Offline
By 7.2.13
Back when the iPhone first came out, the popular tagline floating out there was “There’s an app for that.” Want to order food? Tagline. Want to dump your significant other? Tagline. Perform life-saving surgery? Tagline. It’s gotten to the point now, however, where there really does seem to be an online tool for living the reality of our offline lives. But would you want someone viewing and then digitizing your snail mail? [More]
Apparently My Mailman Doesn’t Feel The Slot Marked “Letters” Works For Delivering Mail
By 3.20.13
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]
United States Postal Service Dropping Saturday Mail Delivery Starting Aug. 1
By 2.6.13
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]
My W-2 Arrives Ripped Open, Only Tax Cat And I Care
By 1.28.13
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]
Insider Explains Why FedEx SmartPost Is So Terrible
By 11.21.12
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]
U.S. Postal Service Re-Enacts Seinfeld Episode, Delivers All June Mail On October 1
By 10.5.12
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]
Mail Carrier Puts My Package In Someone Else’s Rural Mailbox, USPS Calls It ‘Delivered’
By 7.2.12
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]
USPS Turns Box Into Accordion, Hopes You Won't Notice
By 4.17.12
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]
Package Vanishes Into Thin Air Inside The Post Office
By 3.2.12
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]
Here Are The Tattered Remains Of An Attempt To Mail Some Textbooks
By 1.27.12
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]
Postal Service Will Delay Mass Closures
By 12.14.11
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]
