My own personal little RANT!!! I went 'Postal' today!

donna723

Well-Known Member
... and it felt good! Warning: If you have any sentimental attachments to the U.S. Postal Service, better stop reading now!

As many of you know, I live in a very, very small town. It's so small that we have virtually no door-to-door mail delivery for people who live right in town, everyone has a post office box and has to go in and pick up their mail. I don't get that much mail, mostly junk, but I do still get one bill through the mail and a few magazines so I check it a couple of times a week, but not every day. Of course I can pick up mail from the box at any time but the hours they are open keep shrinking, supposedly because of 9-11 (how does that help?). They're closed when I leave for work, closed again when I get home - if I have a package to mail or pick up they are open exactly 2-1/2 hours on Saturday, otherwise I have to take off work! Used to be they had two mail slots in the lobby to drop off outgoing mail - one labeled "Local", the other "Out of Town", now there is just one, but I didn't give it much thought.

So a week or so ago I get a notice that my post office box rental fee is due. They used to have little envelopes to put your check in but this was just a sheet of paper. So I put the notice in a plain envelope marked "Postmaster" along with my check and dropped it through the mail slot, which is what I've done for years. Came in a few days later to check my mail and my friggin' key wouldn't turn in the friggin' mail box - it was LOCKED and I was :mad:! Came home and tried to look them up in the phone book so I could call from work the next day - there is no friggin' phone number listed for the post office! So I wrote a note on a piece of paper explaining that i had paid my friggin' rental fee and my box was now LOCKED and I put the note in the mail slot - no other place to put it! Came in a few days later and the friggin' mailbox is still locked with nine days worth of mail in it!


So I finally got to go in today when they were open. The clerk is very nice and I've never had a problem with her. But she said that they no longer have local mail! They don't even go through it! Even if you're mailing something to someone else in town and it will end up in a mail box a foot away from you, they scoop it all up and it's sent to Nashville where it spends several days going 'round and 'round and then is sent back to our town to be put in the mail box! Even the several thousand local utility bills that go out every month are routed around for days and then sent back! And (get this!) supposedly this is done TO SAVE MONEY!!! And my envelope with my check in it is floating around Nashville with no address but may get back to me some day! And I wasn't the only one whose check is making the rounds of Music City! We apparently have a new postmaster here locally and he went through and locked all the mail boxes of everyone whose check he didn't have yet! And my sheet of paper that I wrote him the note on? He wrote a note back to me and then he PUT IT IN MY LOCKED MAIL BOX!!!! Thanks a lot! So now I've written a second check and now they'll probably cash both of them when the first one comes back!


This makes me almost as mad as when they took out the stamp machines in the lobby and then had the nerve to put up signs that said "FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE THE STAMP MACHINES WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE"! And is it any wonder that the United States Postal Service is dying on the vine!
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
That is insane!

I have heard talk of the USPS cutting down to 5 days a week to save money. Maybe they should cut down to 3 days a week and make everything else Email!
 

klmno

Active Member
Well that's a government system for you- all in the name of saving money. Our machine in the lobby only gives back Susan B. Anthony dollars when you need change- oh, wait, I think they took ours out too. I guess they finally got rid of all those dollars that look like quarters.

Given the day you've had, I won't mention what is being proposed by USPS now- or maybe that's just in our state. I'm not sure.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
It doesn't even make sense! How does it possibly 'save money' to load up a big truck full of local mail, drive it over 100 miles away, run it through their conveyor belts, load it back up in another truck, drive it over 100 miles back here, and then put put it in people's mail boxes? City Hall is a block away from our local Post Office. And now when they mail out the city water & gas bills, instead of the postal clerks just putting them in mail boxes like they used to, they are first sent by truck to Nashville, then several days later they come back and then they are put in people's mail boxes! Not only is it a waste of money, we get the bills several days later now! And just think if they are doing this in small towns everywhere ... how stupid! And how wasteful! Somebody please explain to me how this is saving money? Your tax dollars at work folks!
 
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everywoman

Well-Known Member
I think Henry David Thoreau had it right when he said, "For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life -- I wrote this some years ago -- that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest."
 

susiestar

Roll With It
Very little of what goes on with the Postal Service makes sense. At least not to me. The USPS HAS suffered majorly in the last few decades though. The private companies like UPS and fedex and DHL, email, and other services have all really cut into their business. They really must work to stay competitive.

Sadly more and more areas are going through the cutbacks you see. I HATE going in on Saturday as the line is usually out the door and they rarely have enough people working. Then, if you are more than 30 people back at 15 min before close they send you home! They herd you into the inner lobby and close the doors. It is hot, usually stinky, and a PITA.

I HATE our mail carrier. I sent one package to my aunt because my mom went out of town. It had clothes mom modified for my aunt to wear after surgery. It never arrived! I did the scheduled pickup and it came back to me 2 years later!!! It never even left our post office! My mail is sometimes left out on the road because she drops it out of her vehicle, she puts boxes in all sorts of crazy places including the old car that doesn't run, she once even opened the front door and walked in to put it on the table!!!! I was in the bathroom and came out and FREAKED!!

So I totally hear your rant!! I am sorry they are such a PITA!!!!!

If they will not deliver to your home, why do you have to pay for a box? What if you don't choose to pay and I send you something anyway? Don't they have to deliver to your house? I thought it was one of those "free" services we received because we are citizens of the US. I know most new homes have to have boxes at the road, or developments have to put in a central mail box location, but that still gets free delivery. Why are you not entitled to the free delivery that I receive and most others receive?

Sending gentle hugs to soothe your ranting mind!
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Susie, I have no idea why we have to pay for a PO box but have no door to door mail delivery! One of those small town things that they do because they'e always done it that way.

When I lived out in the country we were on a rural mail route and some of the carriers were definitely better than others. I'll never forget ... one time I spent quite a bit of money to buy a big boxed set of Monty Python video tapes - several of the movies and lots of episodes of the weekly show. I waited and waited for it to get there. I came home from work one day and saw what looked like a shopping bag on my front steps. It was a heavy plastic bag with handles on it like a shopping bag, and inside the bag was my long awaited set of Monty Python tapes ... and about three gallons of WATER! The tapes were merrily bobbing up and down in the water in the open bag! We had bad storms that day and the darned fool had set that plastic bag on my front steps where it was right out in the open and it filled up with rain! Apparently he didn't see the big double carport that was only about ten feet away from the steps and it never occurred to him to put the bag in the carport where it would have stayed dry!
 

muttmeister

Well-Known Member
And now when they mail out the city water & gas bills, instead of the postal clerks just putting them in mail boxes like they used to, they are first sent by truck to Nashville, then several days later they come back and then they are put in people's mail boxes! Not only is it a waste of money, we get the bills several days later now! And just think if they are doing this in small towns everywhere ... how stupid!
They've been doing that in our little town for several years now. If we mail a letter here, it goes 75 miles north to be sorted and then comes back here. Yeah, that sound like a definite money saving measure.:mad:

And one day, several years back, I got a letter with only my name and the town on it (there are less than 200 people in the whole town) and it was stamped they could not deliver it as the address was unknown and at that time THE POSTMASTER WAS MY SISTER IN LAW. in my humble opinion one of the big problems with most big concerns (whether private or public) nowdays is that if there is a rule, you have to follow it EVEN IF IT MAKES NO SENSE. I put up with a lot of that kind of thinking when I was teaching. God forbid, we'd use our brains.:confused:

Then there is this situation: when I moved here (nearly 30 years ago) I had a street address. A few years later I was told I had to change my address with all of my correspondents to be RR#whatever, Box blah blah. So I sent change of address forms to all of my magazines, newspapers, friends, etc. Then, after 9-11 we were told that they would no longer deliver mail address to the RR#whatever, Box blah blah address; we had to change everything back to the street address. I appeared at the post office in high pique and informed them that hades would freeze over before I'd go through all of that again; if they wanted to change my address again they could take care of it; otherwise they could put my mail where the sun didn't shine. I was informed that they would take care of it so there must have been some form they could use but they just didn't want to. :mad:

When I was growing up, in my little town of 35 people, we could put a letter on the train in the morning to my grandparents who lived 12 miles to the west and they could send us an answer back and we'd have it by the evening of the same day. And this is supposed to be progress?:confused:

And they wonder why people are relying on e-mail, text messaging, on-line banking, and FedEx and UPS. They will soon improve so much that they have put themselves out of business.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I mailed a box full of Easter stuff for my grandson in South Carolina on a Saturday and they received in on Monday! But it takes 5 to 6 days for me to get my gas billl from City Hall one block from my house! Go figure!
 

Hound dog

Nana's are Beautiful
Well, we're not so small that we use post office boxes. But our mail is no longer sorted here at the post office. It goes to cincy and then back again even for local mail. Our post office is also a PITA to park at, no lot just a row of spaces next to an intersection making it nearly impossible to back out of the space. So I tend to avoid it at all costs. I pay local bills at the various places and save myself a stamp. Other bills are paid online.

Don't blame you at all for going postal on them. How utterly ridiculous!!!
 

KTMom91

Well-Known Member
Our town has outgrown our post office, they've removed the stamp machines, cut down the hours, and we have revolving letter carriers on our route. Considering we live three blocks from the post office, I wonder why our mail can't be delivered around the same time each day. Sometimes I think the mail could walk here faster than it gets delivered.

Outgoing mail goes to the next larger town over for sorting. My brother lives about 45 minutes south of here, but instead of their mail coming up here for sorting, it goes about 2 hours south before coming back, even for their little town.
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
I don't pay any bills through the mail any more because they take so long to get there! If I mailed something to a local company it would take 5-6 days to get there too! I pay almost all of my bills online now so I know they're paid. The only one I can't pay online is my city utility bill for water and gas and our tiny little town hasn't progressed far enough that the bills are available online. City Hall is only a block away so I just write a check and drop it off on my way to work.

It seems to me that all the post office's 'money saving' strategies are making it less and less user friendly all the time and people have to rely on alternatives more and more. Seems a little counter productive to me! They are cutting their own throats. And locally, it appears that our new postmaster is a bit of a turd so it will just get worse here. Obviously, he's "not from here"!
 

Marcie Mac

Just Plain Ole Tired
I can mail something to Ohio, and it gets there in 2 days max - but I can mail something to No. Ca, and it will take 4 or 5 days. The past few months accounting has made me crazy saying they don't have checks I mailed them, or checks the people I do business with down here have mailed them. Turns out the Post Office did have the checks, along with a ton of other mail - just sitting in the back in a BAG gathering dust, but someone from the No. Office had to go into the Post Office and start screaming for them to make them look for our mail. Have sent policies to our Arizona ofice - 3 out of 5 were never found. I have been sent Certified Mail, the carrier NEVER attempts to deliver it - and he knows I am home all day - just easier to shoot a little paper thru the door telling me to go pick it up at the Post Office rather than knock and have me sign for it.. Lazy people

Almost everything I send out nowdays I send via email - have had my postage go from 500 or 600 a month down to 30 a month. Multiply me by thousands and you can see why the Post Office is taking a hit money wise. When it came to getting a P.O. Box, I did get a quote thru them, but they were 40.00 higher a month than the local post office box mail places. I don't have to worry if I get something bigger than my post office box, the woman just puts it beind the counter and CALLS me letting me know its there. Yeah, her stamps are 5 cents higher than the post office charges, but the service is excellent and I never have to wait in line to send something :)

The Post Office is never going to be able to recoup with bill pay on line, and email. They are going to go the way of the dinosauer soon

Marcie
 

trinityroyal

Well-Known Member
Gosh! I wonder if the people who run Canada Post are related to those who run the USPS. What a nightmare. This is why I rely on UPS and e-mail.
 

DammitJanet

Well-Known Member
I dont get what the problem is with delivering the "undeliverable mail". I do understand the mail being sent elsewhere to be sorted though.

At one point years ago I worked for one of those mail sorting centers. Let me tell you, that is a very tough job! Images of letters go past you on computer monitors and you have to type in key codes for where it gets sent depending on the zip, address, or some other information on the image.

I lived in NC and got the mail for a section of NYC.

If all we had was Mrs Smith at Bean Rd, North Rockaway, NY. I could get a letter to her. Now I guess Ms Smith alone wouldnt get there!
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
What I don't get though ... there are thousands and thousands of tiny little post offices like ours, and they are fully staffed! These people could sort and put up all the local mail for this area in an hour - tops! It has to cost a thousand times more to truck it all to Nashville a hundred miles away, sort it all out there, then truck it all back again for our local people to put it in people's mail boxes! The only thing they have saved is the second or two that it used to take them to cancel the stamp! How is this saving any money?
 

donna723

Well-Known Member
Another thing - census forms? Has everybody gotten one? Did they come in the mail? I keep seeing ads urging people to fill them out and send them in and I haven't even gotten one yet. I got a circular in the mail about temporary census taker jobs but I never got the form itself. Should I care? Will the census police be coming after me?
 

DDD

Well-Known Member
Our mail also goes to a larger city about an hour N of us. That has always been true so I have had no shock but
this year :mad: you can no longer drop off mail after 4:30 to get on the dumb truck. So small business people can
not drop the mail off after standard closing hours at 5 PM. That's a major problem. Also when you are mailing in your State tax forms if they don't get postmarked by the designated day you pay a huge (well, relatively huge,lol)
penalty. It is not unusual for me to mail the envelope two days in advance to make sure there is no penalty only to
get a notice from the State that the postmark was after the deadline. Ugh!

No Saturay mail?? Well my carrier says "boy that's sure going to eat into my overtime". :surprise: Interesting.
At least I don't live in your small town, Donna. Phew/Whew! DDD
 
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