postal deliveries

Deucemoi

Deucemoi

Member
I have been curious about incorrect mail deliveries and what other people do with the mail. There is an old burns/allen stick about the mail where gracie says to the post man "you didnt the deliver mail yesterday" whereby he says "you are right I did not" gracie then says"what do you do with the mail when you dont deliver it?"...postman replies"i will check with the post master" end of conversation. postman the delivers mail to a neighbor and asks how long they have known gracie, reply"a long time, why" postman tells the above tale. neighbor says"well what do you do with the mail you dont deliver?"...

so the question I have is if you receive mail with the wrong name/address do you.....
toss it in the garbage.....
write on the envelope return to sender....
write on the envelope wrong address...
or something else
 

If it has the wrong address but a neighbors name on it I put it in their mailbox. If I don't recognize the name I put it back in the mail box with wrong address written on it. I never open any that aren't meant for me and I would never destroy them.
 
I had an issue a few years back. Suddenly started getting mail for someone I did not know. I have lived here 25 years. The concern was it was important stuff, from Medicaid, DSS, and Blue Cross/Blue shield. I would send it back, and still keep getting mail. I did decide to open one, only so I could get more information about who to contact to get the situation resolved. This was happening over a period of 3-4 months, or more. FINALLY it was apparently resolved and I stopped getting the mail.
 
We get mail put in our letter box for a neighbour who has the same last name as us , and his and my hubs first name start with R ..so it's hard for our Postie unless he looks carefully at the first names .

We only live 4 houses apart so I take it up.to them and leave it under the doormat or ring the door bell as they don't have a mailbox out the front ( they have a private mail box at the local post office )
 
I write wrong address and put back in mail box. Would never open to get more info. Its none of my business. Let the postman deal with it. Its his job. Can't believe someone would open mail for another person. Especially with the penalties for doing so. My friend that died still gets mail at my house I write deceased and return to sender on it and put back into box. His was all donation requests as he contributed to almost all charities. I could tell they were charities by the return address. Finally after 2 years they have almost stopped. Would not dream of opening even after death.
 
I wouldn't open mail for another person, either. When I get mail that's not for me, I either take it to the right person if it's a neighbor, or I write delivered in error on it and put it back in the mailbox. If it's a name I don't know but the address is mine, I write unknown at this address and put it back.
 
I think our mailman is on crack, sometimes. Occasionally, we get mail with the right "number" but an altogether different street. Huh?

We have the group mailbox thingy for our area.....individual locked boxes and two big packages boxes. He opens the back and distributes the mail into the boxes. Twice in the last year he has left the back standing open when he left. I called the post office both times and was told they'd send someone out "when they could". Since the box wouldn't stay closed, I went out with a roll of duct tape and securely taped it shut. Real secure, huh? It was still taped shut the next morning the first time.

One of the major oxymorons: "postal service".
 
I think our generation looks at mail delivery as something somewhat sacred but the newer generations, not so much. Some of my young-adult grandchildren live on the west coast and when they have changed addresses without telling me and I send a birthday card (with a check) to the older address, it never shows up. It is like it got trashed. One thing I learned years ago about sending cards to them in the mail was to use as standard white envelopes as possible... the ones that were obvious cards with brightly colored envelopes often never got there.
 
For a while we lived at an address where there was another road with a similar address and a similar sounding road name. We used to get mail for the people who lived at the same address as ours; but on the other road, and they also got our mail.
At first, we just marked wrong address, and put it back in the mailbox, and let the carrier take it to the right address. We noticed that some of our mail would arrive marked wrong address; and we came to the conclusion that the people an theother road were also getting our mail.
This meant that it was not our particular mailman who was creating the problem; but more likely it was someone who did the preliminary sorting at the post office, and the mail just went out on the wrong routes.
After that, I started calling the post office and reporting it when we got the wrong mail, and even moreso when we were expecting a package (usually from Amazon), and it didn't arrive; but we got the alert from Amazon that it had been delivered.
Eventually, I complained to the head postmaster often enough, and vigorously enough, that they started looking more closely at the address on the mail.
I don't think that they ever totally got it stopped; but the mis-deliveries did get a whole lot fewer after that.
 
We are very fortunate to have the same mailman, Warren, for 10 years in Florida. Very seldom makes a mistake and if he does he takes right care of it. In NY, we have a small PO and no individual mail delivery. We have a rented PO box number which remains the same from Year to year.
 
A few hints and facts from a retired carrier.
If you get a mis delivered piece of mail, placing it back in the outgoing mail stream will probably result in you getting it back the next day.
Once your carrier removes your letter from your box, it is never touched by another human hand until it is delivered. Your letter is scanned by an optical character reader, and a barcode applied to your mailpiece.
More than 90% of letter size mail is sorted by machine, your carrier gets it in a two foot long tray,called DPS,(Delivery Point Sequenced). Your carrier is forbidden by management to touch the contents until on the street. That misdelivered letter that you tossed back will be in the same place in the tray, so you will probably get it back.

When placing the mail back in your box,place a rubber band or a sticky note on it so it will be obvious.

Using plain white envelopes for money bearing cards does have some merit. Thieves in the Postal Service,although extremely rare, are usually detected quickly and dealt with immediately .

As with any public service job,the USPS and its employees take an awful lot of unmerited abuse. Yes there are slugs working for the PO,but the vast majority of Postal employees are conscientious and hard working.

It is incredibly easy to sit in your recliner and espouse the woulda shoulda couldas of the job. I have found over the last six decades that any job can be performed by a monkey on a bicycle, until I actually gained I modicum of knowledge about the job.

Being a letter carrier was a good job, but not at all an easy one. When I retired my walking route was eight miles long with 1138 delivery points.
 
Hi Robusta.
We have had our carrier, Tom, for a few years. A recent thing he did for us impressed me. We had ordered an item from Amazon, and it was pretty heavy and bulky. I happened to be outside when he delivered it. He would NOT let me take it from him. He not only carried it up our ramp to the door, he insisted on bringing it in for me and put it on the table. Some may say "well, it is his job" but I thanked him heartily and told him I was grateful
 
It's funny that after reading this thread the other day I got mail from a Prison. The inmate had written on the back the name of the person it should be delivered to,but since he didn't know their address he hoped the address he mailed it to knew who he was looking for. I didn't know the person he mentioned so I just wrote "Wrong address" and put it back in the mail box.
 
I live in a rural area. I'm 183, and I'd occasionally get mail for 184. I felt weird putting mail in his mailbox- I don't know, it was protected by the Constitution, Federal crime, or something. So, I knocked on the door and gave it to him.
 
Back when I had a street-side mailbox, a local church went up and down the street one day putting what I considered objectionable flyers in the mailboxes (you know...."you're-going-to-burn-in-hell-unless-you-stop-doing-all-those-Godless-things-and-come-to-church....").

I took one to my post office and complained. They told me that, yes, it's illegal to do that (can't put non-stamped items in a mail box) but that there wasn't anything they could do about it. Not anything they could do about it? What kind of bull-hockey is that? Are these people breaking a federal law or what? Yes, but..... Rinse and repeat.

I decided it wasn't worth it to get my knickers in a major twist about it, but it made me angry.
 
I live in an apartment complex and there is a mailbox area. The mailboxes make a shelf and I put the mail that is not for me atop that.
 

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