Postal service is often though of as an oxymoron at the best of times.
These days, it is worse.
Example 1: On October 14, I sent a garnishment for a client to Chase's garnishment department in Columbus Ohio via certified mail.
Tracking shows it went from my location to Pontiac, then to Columbus, then back to Pontiac and was then went to Shreveport, Louisiana and was apparently picked up by someone on November 17 in Monroe, Louisiana.
What? How does that work exactly?
Example 2: Client in the Flint area sends via priority mail on October 10 some important documents for his case. Should be delivered October 11. As you might guess, it is not.
Weeks pass and the postal service can't say where it is or what happened to it. Client not happy that some sensitive stuff is missing and may be in the wrong hands.
Well, it arrived yesterday, looking like it had been run over by a truck multiple times - a month and 13 days late, and it still does not exist when you try and track it with the tracking number on the label.
Combine that with days where no mail is received or massively late and it gets even better.
It's always fun to get a month after the mailing date a notice that a hearing is scheduled and it arrives on the morning of the hearing - or even worse a day after the hearing date which leads to lots of problems as you might imagine. That took some work to fix.
According to one postal employee I've spoken to, the Pontiac and Detroit Post offices are badly short-staffed, lots of people out claiming they were exposed to Covid, so they don't come in to work, and the level of incompetence is getting even higher than it normally is as a standard.
Sheesh. The courts need to start sending these notices via email, because the mail is sure as heck not getting through.
5 comments:
I feel your pain, Aaron! Since we live in the country, our mail box is a couple of miles away on the highway. We've always been big users of Amazon, so most packages are not delivered to the box, an orange slip is supposed to be left there to let us know it's arrived and is used to identify the package when presented to the postal clerk for pickup. It is not unusual for us to see the notification that the package has been "delivered" on Amazon and nothing in the box. I've tried to go and just show my Driver's License, but no way. "No tickee, no packee!". I had one fairly expensive and needed tool show arrival, but no ticket. I checked every day for a week. Finally, demanded to speak to the postmaster. I told him about the problem, showed him the notification on Amazon, told him about the history of the problem. He said he couldn't do anything about it because my mailman wasn't a Post Office employee, he was a civilian contractor. I bet NASA could have saved billions by strapping a payload to my ass as I was in lunar orbit within seconds. I think I scared the supervisor ("Going Postal" is a real thing) as he went back in the back and searched for and found my package.
It still happens occasionally, but when I show up now without a slip, they do go back and search.
I really wish Amazon would allow you to choose shipping method. UPS delivers to my door, FedEx delivers to the beginning of my lane, and USPS occasionally delivers the mail somewhere.
Fed-Ex. If you really need it (ever again!) then NEVER USPS.
The USPS was a huge ball of Suck and Fail even BEFORE Covid. Now it should just be Nuked From Orbit.
NEVER, EVER send something you need (or want to see again) via the Postal Service.
THe issue is that the workers can, essentially, never be fired unless ...you know, a live boy or a dead prostitute kind of thing. Or guns in the workplace...
But they can lose guns and NOTHING happens... Even when you get the inspectors involved! Nothing...
Oh boy I can sympathise. I had a package sent USPS to me recently. Normally when a package hits Detroit-I get it the next day.This package made a 17 day stop over in Detroit before resuming its journey.
I though it had been lost or stolen, but it finally showed up.
I had 2 printer cartridges sent to me from Amazon. One black and one tri color. They were sent at the same time, they hit Michigan at the same time, and were both at I think Wyandotte at the same time. They were supposed to be here on Saturday. I got the tri color one on Saturday, and a note on my email telling me that they had a delay in shipment, and I got the black cartridge today. Along with a package that was supposed to be here tomorrow. That had a morse code straight key, and an early christmas present for my wife. The ink cartridges were about twice as expensive as the other package, yet I got the second package early.
I know why and how Amazon works, and the reasons that they do things the way they do. I just cannot understand how two ink cartridges can arrive at the same time, at the same terminal, and be shipped out on wildly differing days. You would think that the manager of the terminal had once worked for the fed. gov.
pigpen51
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