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USPS

I understand that COVID has probably wreaked havoc with the USPS. I understand that Christmas is upon us and more people are ordering packages through the USPS. That’s about all I understand about the post office here.

In Texas, we had the best mail ladies. Our regular mail lady came Monday – Friday and the “sub” came on Saturday. Both are delightful, are my friends on Facebook and . . they delivered our mail to our address. Amazing . . apparently.

Here, I’m not blaming the carrier. At least half the problems we have seem to start at the post office, and not with our carrier . . though I think she feels like I blame her. I’m not blaming anyone. Honestly, I don’t see how the USPS does as well as it does . . nationwide, but not all post offices seem to be created equally. If I’m the only person in this town having these problems, that’s one thing but if there are others having the same problem, then someone needs to be paying closer attention to where packages are going.

We seem to get more mail that isn’t ours than is ours. One day I was at the post office. Our mail had been held for a few weeks and I was there to pick it up. The postal employee handed me a big package, along with our mail. Hmmm . . I hadn’t had any packages sent here. I looked at it and said “This isn’t ours. It belongs to my neighbor.” He had already scanned it as delivered and he couldn’t seem to figure out the best way to “unscan” it. After a few minutes, of talking to other employees to try to figure out what to do and all of them looking at me like I had screwed something up, I said “Do you want me just to take it to them?” Oh, yes . . that would be great. So, I delivered the package to the neighbor.

I’m pretty careful about watching or packages to be delivered and I’m almost always aware of what’s going to be delivered each day. Until yesterday, I would have said “I always know what packages are coming each day.” First, there’s the trick of how I will sneak them into the house without Vince seeing, whether that means walking out to the mail box with a heavy, bulky coat on in July in order to conceal a package, or remembering something I desperately need from the store so I can send Vince out about the time mail is being delivered. Second, I like to know when packages are delivered – porch pirates!! So, I do watch my packages pretty closely.

Several times, I’ll have a package out for delivery and it never shows up. At the end of the day, the tracking may show “Held at owner’s request” or “No mail receptacle”. What? I didn’t ask for the package to be held. I’m looking out the window at my mail box. The guy at the post office says “We’re limited in what our options are!” I said “What does that mean?” Well . . it means it got put on the wrong route yesterday but you should get it today. Really?

One evening late . . probably about 7:30 p.m., I went out with Rita and there was a package on our porch. I knew that wasn’t there about 5:30 so I looked at it to see who it was from. Some place I didn’t recognize, then realized it was for the neighbor. There are only two houses on my street. This shouldn’t be too hard. Find the right street and there’s a 50/50 chance they could get it to the right house with their eyes closed!

One day I had been gone for a couple of weeks, had the mail held so I never looked in the mail box. I arrived on a Friday and our mail was set to be delivered again starting Tuesday. I went out Tuesday morning to put an envelope in the box and there was a package. This one was for a neighbor one street behind us. Not sure how long it had been there.

Apparently I’ve been so caught up in the cross-stitching frenzy that I didn’t realize I had a package supposed to arrive yesterday.

Yesterday evening, I get this phone call.

Lady: I’m looking for Judy Laquidara
Me: You’ve found her!
Lady: I have a package that was delivered to our house but it’s for you. I had several packages and I was opening them, accidentally opened yours and realized it wasn’t mine.
Me: Really? What is it?
Lady: I don’t even know. It looks like sewing stuff.
Me: Do you know who it’s from?
Lady: Hmm . . looks like “Eat, Sleep, Knit!”

Then I said “Great! Do you mind if I send all my Eat, Sleep, Knit packages to you and I can pick them up during the night, after my husband goes to sleep?”

No . . I didn’t say that.

Me: I can come get it. What’s your address? (Thinking she’d be on one of the surrounding streets).

The lady doesn’t even live in the same town as I do! I was trying to explain where I live. She didn’t know where any of those places where. I asked if she knew where Atwoods was. She might know . . I could tell she had to think about it because Atwoods used to be on the main drag into Joplin but now it’s moved to our end of town. We went back and forth — her telling me landmarks that I didn’t recognize; me asking Vince if he knew where they were. No! She finally told me she’s near Pittsburg, KS. What?? That’s about 25 – 30 miles from me.

We tried to figure out the best way for me to get the package. She’s a young mom, home schools her kids, comes to Joplin on Fridays to buy groceries and do what she has to do.

We finally came upon a place we both can find; she will call me on Friday when she starts to leave her house and I’ll leave and we’ll meet at a mutually convenient place and I’ll get my package of “sewing supplies”.

Without being able to trust that mail is getting delivered correctly, I need to make a list of everything I order and check it off as it arrives. That list could be a scary thing in the wrong hands so maybe I’ll just hope for the best and not have such incriminating evidence available to someone who already thinks I’m buying too much.

I will call the post office . . again . . and at least let them know what happened and I will hope that after Christmas, and after COVID, our mail system will be a little more trustworthy.

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Comments

  1. I ordered some fabric…it took a 4 day vacation -somewhere between the Denver distribution center and our local post office-. 8 or so miles..and it was a priority box.there is no complaining you can do… They have also stopped delivery to our box and somehow marked our unit as empty..guy at the PO blamed the carrier…

    • And you’ll never know who is at fault – just hope they get it figured out soon.

      • It finally got delivered yesterday-4 days late..no one in the whole post office takes any kind of responsibility for anything.
        We live in a townhouse complex, big mailbox divided up-frequently get other people’s mail. Some days no mail because they are short of carriers
        . I think a big part of it is our local PO. When we lived outside of a different town, the mail was reliable, never got other people’s stuff.

  2. People are doing more online shopping to avoid going out because of co-vid. Also, many mail sorting machines were removed prior to the election in an effort to show that mail-in voting is not effective. The machines have been destroyed and likely won’t be replaced any time soon.

    • I’m not sure that’s the problem. The mail at our house in Texas seems to be working just fine. This issue in Missouri was happening in August when we first began staying here off and on. I figured it was because we had so many mail holds but I’ve been here since early October with no mail holds and it’s still happening. Actually, I’m mostly having trouble with boxes and I’m not sure what kind of sorting is done with boxes that would have affected mail in voting.

  3. I ordered a new Christmas tree Nov. 28th, I received the notification it had shipped from Dallas coming to north central Virginia. To be delivered Friday, Dec. 4th at 8 p.m., not “by” 8 p.m. Different, but okay. I have all my packages delivered to my office (long story involving my dog and a delivery driver that didn’t understand English and my homeowner’s insurance company requesting that there be “no” home deliveries). There was nothing to do but wait for the delivery. At 20 minutes to 8, there was an update, “delivery pending”!! I could have gone home over 4 hours earlier. Finally got another update and it was in Shreveport, LA. Now it is Tuesday and it is about 1.5 hours away and I still do not have a delivery date. This is driving me a little nuts, but hay, what are you going to do?!!!!!

    • That’s just it – there’s NOTHING we can do. No one cares. No one takes responsibility. No one offers to change anything. Like the guy at the post office said “That’s weird!” I bit my tongue and didn’t come back with a smarta** response but I wanted to.

      I hope you get your tree soon.

  4. I drive to the post office to mail my bills in person. Far too many times the bills I mailed from my home mail box went missing…leaving us with past due accounts and having to call banks to cancel pmt on missing checks. Such a pain!

    • I don’t think we have a single bill that we actually pay through the mail. Everything is auto pay or we pay online and that’s the exact reason we do it. We mailed our property taxes one year and that check never made it. They charge extra to pay online but this year, we paid the extra to keep from having to go down there.

  5. Judy it sounds like the mail people that have been delivering (using that word very loosely) in my neighborhood must have gone to Missouri–we have had all of those problems plus more for at least 20 years. With this informed delivery program they have doesn’t help any either. On packages–you beat me with one being delivered to another town–yet how in the world did she find your phone number? Guess it was on the packing info. But we have such poor service–I don’t even think our mail people know how to read. Only blessing I have with it, is the two neighborhoods next to me one all the streets start with kirk and there are probably about 75-100 different names, and the other neighborhood all starts with sage –with about the same amount of variations. I bet they get mail mix-ups there all the time even more. Don’t blame it on COVID as I said this has been going on for greater than 20 years in this particular area–and I think it is system wide. I think you were just very blessed by having such good mail carriers when you were in Texas. And as far as trying to figure out how to “hide” packages–I too had to do that also. Sometimes it worked–sometimes backfired. Good luck.

    • She said she had several packages and was opening them all. She opened mine without realizing it wasn’t for her and I understand that. When she was trying to figure out what it was, she looked at the invoice, saw my name and my phone number is on the invoice.

  6. Do you have USPS Informed Delivery? We get an email every morning that shows what we’ll be getting in the mail that day. Some things don’t show up on it (like magazine), but it lists packages due to arrive and shows an image of letters.

    • Verna you are blessed by getting the images–we might get one image out of 5. Plus I might get it 3-4 hours after my mail is delivered or the next day. We have such “good” mail service—NOT.

      • When I first started Informed Delivery several years ago, I got images of almost everything. No I rarely get an image of anything.

    • I get the daily email also and I keep it in the inbox until I check my mail and get everything that is listed. I also save all the shipping notification emails from companies. I check them for the estimated delivery date and delete only when I get them. It’s easier than setting up a separate list. Of course, this works only if you have your own email account that is not checked by others!

      • I should set up a gmail account just for ordering. That way everything will go into that account and not be cluttering up my regular email. I think I’ll do that. Thanks.

      • I do something similar–I have folders in my email–so I put all of my ordering stuff in that folder–be it the receipt from ordering it, or shipping info for tracking. Once I get the item then I will delete. If it is from a place I usually do not order from, I’ll hold on to the receipt in another folder in case there is problems I know who to contact–if it is Amazon, Walmart, and a few other places i frequent I know how access my receipts from them. Just a way I do it–might help someone.

    • I do but I had to use one address for the house in Texas and a different address for the house in MO. The email address I used for the house in MO is one I don’t check every day plus, lately, Informed Delivery has not even been right. I get packages that aren’t showing they’re supposed to be delivered today and I don’t get packages that show they should be delivered. I just hadn’t looked at it yesterday. I had two packages arriving. Informed delivery shows that the one I received at my house arrived at 1:03 p.m. but the one that arrived at someone else’s house arrived at 3:40 p.m.

      Several times in the last two months, I’ve had packages say out for delivery, not get delivered and those are the ones that said “Held at customer’s request” and the P.O. tells me they were put on the wrong delivery route.

  8. I know exactly what you mean! I sent a package of homemade goodies to my son, so from Northern New York to Northern New jersey almost directly south of me. It went to Rochester, New York which Southwest of me??? and stayed there for 2 days, then came back to me in Northern NY and now they refuse to give me a refund?!!? Unbelievable!!

  9. For a while I was getting mail for my neighbor to the east of me fairly frequently. They actually face another street, so the address is very different. I accidentally opened their phone bill one time, because I just had a stack of envelopes face down and was using a letter opener to open them. I just about had a heart attack when I saw how much the bill was. Then I checked the billing name/address and realized it wasn’t my bill. I apologized profusely to them for having had opened it. I try and do better on checking the name now…I know some of my mail has wandered too though. Unless it is a bill, though, I have no idea what may have never arrived. It’s frustrating. You can’t trust anything any more.

  10. I live in GA in a 55 plus community with a central Mail Box area. The boxes are by apartment number. Over and over I get other peoples mail and they get mine. So it must be all over the USA. Still waiting for a package from Connecting Threads that shows ready for pick up there on December 4. Still has not been picked up from their locations. Oh well, it’s 2020 what can we expect!

  11. Yikes – you do have some incompetent USPS employees there. We had such good service in the really small town we used to live in. But here – not so much! Twice now we’ve had packages that required signatures delivered to the same rude neighbor 3 houses down. This neighbor signs for OUR package, then just tosses it in a corner of his garage when he realizes it’s not for him. Twice!! When we checked with the post office they saw who signed and told us. But my husband has insisted the mailman who made the mistake goes and gets it from the rude guy. Ever since when the mailman brings something to the house instead of the mailbox he is very unfriendly.

    • I get the same treatment. It’s like we’re the bad guy for expecting them to do their job.

  12. I am sure everyone has a story to tell about bad mail delivery. We get Informed Delivery in our email and it said a package was going to arrive on Friday. It still isn’t in and the tracking on it says “In transit – Arriving late”. It has sat in Kansas City for 9 days. It took 4 days to go 30 miles from a rural post office to the Kansas City sorting facility. My DIL sent school photos of my grandson at the end of October and I never got that at all. Since there was no tracking number, it is lost forever.

    • Kansas City definitely seems to be a big problem for our mail. Things get there and sit and sit and sit. I’ve had things to from Kansas City to Springfield, MO, then back to Kansas City and sit another week before arriving here, just 2.5 hours from KC. It’s kinda discouraging me from ordering because I feel like I should be writing down everything I order so I can check it off when/if it does arrive.

  13. I just sent out a package that I was worried about arriving in time, but didn’t want to pay overnight rates. I tracked it, and it arrived yesterday evening (PO Box). They had said probably Tuesday, so I’m happy!

    On the other hand, an independent artist/crafter on the east coast has been saying for a few days that she’s frustrated with USPS, and if we’re shopping, do it early! (Like, now.) Then today she posted a part of communications with them…it looks like they totally lost a package. Sad.

    I recently read an article about what it’s like to work in a post office. In addition to removal of sorting machines, they are cutting back overtime. Mail is piling up in facilities. I read about a sorting center where you have to weave through little passages between the packages, some of which are perishable (meat rotting, baby chicks dying…) It must be grim.

  14. I think we all have stories about Informed Delivery and the USPS that have only gotten worse lately. The oddest thing I’ve seen is I checked a package just before midnight on Dec 7 on the ID website. It showed that package had arrived in Atlanta on Dec 8 at 4:30 am. Suppose the USPS is clairvoyant? I’m hoping it shows up in Kennesaw, GA, in the next day or two.

  15. We have been having problems here in our area of NC for years, but definitely worse this year. There seems to be this new system where UPS picks up the package from the store, then hands it over to USPS at a regional center. One package sat at that regional center for a month! Another two weeks. I have one there now according to tracking since Nov. 25th. I don’t know how much is covid and how much just a screwy mail system. And yes, we also get mail and UPS delivered to wrong addresses although correctly labelled. That is plain old human error. Very frustrating. I wish you luck.

  16. I just ordered a package that shipped from Portland, OR on Nov 30. Arrived in Greensboro on Dec 3 and was to be delivered on Saturday, Dec 5. My tracking email said the package was delivered at 8:54 am on Saturday, Dec 5 with a cute little note that said “your package has arrived, enjoy opening it.” It’s almost Wednesday and I have yet to see my package. It’s one little piece of fabric that could fit into my locked mailbox. I tried calling the USPS but they send you from menu to menu and you can never talk to a live person. Today I went to the Post Office and filed a complaint. They showed me a picture of where my mailbox is to confirm and then said they have to talk to the carrier. I told her he’s always on a headset phone talking very loudly the whole time he’s working. Not paying attention to his job!

  17. Wife of a happy retired letter carrier here. Lots of issues that really aren’t a carriers fault. Your house in Texas may be a rural route which can be totally different than a city route. Have you signed up for text messages from USPS? It is more accurate than informed delivery but I still get both. A package can say it’s to be delivered in Informed Delivery but until you get a text that says Out for Delivery – it’s not coming. With all the packages the routes can be split between the regular carrier and the extra help who don’t know the area. There are employees that are classified CCA (which are considered a part time job but they work overtime when needed and “Regular Carrier” which are full time career employees. Mail in my area goes to Kansas City to be sorted – I live 35 minutes from the previous sorting facility that closed a few years ago as a cost saving measure. If I mail a letter to my next door neighbor – it goes to KC and back to Holton (north of Topeka) – it takes two days to get delivered to my neighbor.
    We live in the country and have a rural route carrier – so your best to get to know your carrier when January comes and that will make life easier. Christmas season is awful time of year for all carriers.

    • Both the Texas and Missouri houses are on rural routes. I do get text messages and every time my package has not been delivered, I got a message saying it was out for delivery but, in fact, it was on the wrong delivery vehicle. I can understand this happening some but in 6 weeks, it’s happened four or five times; I’ve had four packages delivered to my house that weren’t mine; I’ve had several dropped off by neighbors who got my packages. Six or eight weeks ago, it wasn’t Christmas rush yet. The past few weeks, we do have our regular carrier delivering the mail and someone else delivering packages in a rented van. I understand they’re busy and stressed this time of year but we’ve lived lots of places and never had issues quite like this.

      I can tell you that I’ve always been friends with our mail carriers – I’m friends with the two from Texas on Facebook. I’ve taken meals to their homes when they had surgery; I meet them with cinnamon rolls or cookies when I was baking. They got fresh eggs often and lots of veggies and fruit from my garden/trees. One even got a little dirty one day, called ahead, came in and took a shower and left wearing my clothes. It was our mail carrier when we lived in MO the first time who told me that we could have chickens in the city and convinced Vince to let me get some. We kept our extra Dr. Peppers in the garage and he saw them and on a hot day, would often ask for a cold Dr. Pepper. So . . you don’t have to tell me to be friends with the mail carrier. I’ve tried with this lady. One day she was a bit abrupt and I walked away shaking my head. Vince said “She doesn’t know what she’s missing out on!” I said “No cookies for her!”

      I think I said in my original post that I don’t blame our mail lady. If the packages aren’t sorted correctly, she only delivers what’s in her pile. Same with the package being delivered to a house not even in our town. But . . somewhere . . there’s a disconnect.

      • My husband would be the first to agree there are issues. I didn’t understand that you knew who your regular carrier was. I know you are a nice person! I’m sorry that you are frustrated – I would be too!

        • I really don’t think it’s any one person’s fault – just a combination of a lot of mismanagement, cut backs, no accountability — all the way up to the top and those out delivering the mail are probably as frustrated as I am. I am always nice to the carriers because I know a lot of people take it out on them because they’re our “connection” to the problem.

          The first day I was here, I met the mail lady, introduced myself, apologized ahead of time for the amount of packages we receive. I now think that when I call the post office with a complaint, which I always tell them is not her fault, they’re confronting her about it because I’m on her route so, therefore, she thinks I’m blaming her.

  18. Not only are they busy as little bees, but they took out a lot of the sorting machines and other things they needed to get mail and packages out. This was done by the director of the post office or whatever you call him.

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