Good god does the post office suck

[baron4406]

Ok a little backstory. I live in a small town, all my mail goes to a P.O. box. So your address must have the PO box on it, however our local post office is really good about it so its no biggie. All our mail is sorted at the slightly larger post office at the next town over. Well enter the new postmaster there, a total power hungry jerk who decided to take it upon themselves to encourage everyone to use the "PO box" on their mail, she does this by sending back anything that doesn't have the proper PO box on it. Ok so I never use the post office for anything because of this power hungry woman. I made a recent order of some JD Smoking chips from Sears. They never got here even tho i used UPS. Here's the kicker, sometimes UPS has a sleazy deal with some shipper that they will only deliver it it to the local post office. The thing about that is UPS won't accept an address that has a PO box on it-even if the street address is on it too. See where this is going? If the PO box isn't on it you won't get the package. In fact my local post office showed me what they did, when it came in they immediately marked it "no known address", bad thing this puts the package in some sort of limbo-it never gets back to the shipper. Nice huh? She has said she does this to "teach us a lesson". I made a complaint with the USPS about her and even they said that's actually against policy, they are required to make an attempt at delivery. Oh well. Can't wait until that government run crap goes out of business for good. Made complaints to Sears and UPS too but it looks like I'm out $20.

[bentstick]

I fell for you Baron, went through almost same thing,only post office had one set of house numbers,and my deed to the house had another house number, what do you do when PO tells you theaddy you are useing does not exist. Tried using the other one and some of internet orders upon check out would tell me no such addy,there was a day all you needed on the envelope was a name and town you still got your mail!

[Washashore]

Total bummer... I can share (slightly) in your frustrations. I have a mailbox on the road and because of that, i have to use the number and name of my street, but have to use the name of a different town when going through the USPS, although FedEx, UPS, etc.. go by physical address.

I recently ordered a controller from Mulekicker and it went to my town Post Office first then back to the other town. I tried to pick it up when they said they had it, when in reality they didn't, but then they did, etc.... I was SO frustrated!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!

[whiskeytripping]

I would say don't even get me started, but you did. The post office was brought about when mail couldn't be sent from one side of the country to the other side, after the railroad it got better, but NOW? We have another BLOATED government office that we pay our taxes to from our paycheck, THEN we PAY to send a package to where ever we send it to WITH EXTREMELY POOR AND VERY DISSAPOINTING SERVICE. We need to let the post office go under like they deserve to. UPS or FEDEX can do a MUCH better service. Anytime I get a package from them, I can look online and BAM, I find out where my package last departed. With the stupid post office they don't even update their systems, the service is there, but don't work. Then we go to our post office and you have a line of people wanting to send something with only 1 worker behind the counter, the people that deliver the mail are contract workers and we don't get mail till 7 PM at night. I could go on but I don't even want to get worked up tonight. Thanks guys for me getting that off my chest. Now it's time to watch Bill O'reiley and see if I can calm down

[Braz]

Try to send a letter to me via UPS or FedEx and see how much it costs. Bet they won't do it for 45 cents.

I get lots of stuff sent via the USPS and am rather impressed by the speed of their Priority Mail package service.

The biggest problem with the post office is that Congress has imposed an insane pension funding burden on them* - one that no other government or private business has to meet - and then will not allow rate increases to cover the costs. The only alternative for the post office is to cut costs and that means cut service. Oh, and by the way, the post office gets no, I said NO, direct subsididies from the federal government.

*the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger.

[whiskeytripping]

And your right Braz on he pensions, the contract labor we have delivering the mail are so swamped and they won't give them ANY help, the lady delivering ours is doing the work of 2 people a couple of years back, hats why she's so far behind, I spoke with another lady in a different county and she said that she was contract too, and they didn't make money at all compared to the real postal workers. And if she wasn't in a spot near retirement she wouldn't be there cause they are working her in the ground as well. Pensions are bankrupting several city's across the US. it's really the fault of the people issuing the pension plans to the people though, not the workers fault. I know I would be pissed if I was promised them and they cut it. We're just at a point where financially we cannot support the pensions, and someone is going to have to make some tough decisions that are going to be hard on some people. They are really in a pickle on this issue