Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night

[frogmarch]

stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds - unless you live here in Chadron, Nebraska.



My package arrived here in Chadron twice and apparently was delivered to the wrong house, so back it went to Omaha, where it will probably go to North Platte for sorting.

All our mail gets sorted in North Platte. for instance, if I were to mail my next-door neighbor a card, it would go to North Platte and then back to Chadron, where, if luck would have it, the card would be delivered within a few days.

When the Chadron PO opens this morning, I'll call to try to find out what's going on. This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened to my mail. PMO!

[DebJ]

1. We've had regular issues in our neighborhood of late, also.

For the first six or so years that we lived here, we always had the same mail delivery person, who always came around noon. But the last year or two, I've noticed sometimes there is a different delivery person every day, and there is no telling at all when the mail truck will go by. I'm guessing this happened because of cuts to the post office budgets; our route must have become a 'whomever is available' type of assignment.

At the same time, packages I ordered started being delivered somewhere else on my street, and the neighbors would just put them back in the mailbox with a note rather than make the 'extreme' effort of walking them to my door (there are only 10 houses on our dead end street and I'm at the intersection so they pass by anyway). However, at least doing this would alert the postal carrier they are misdelivering....except that with a different carrier every day, that's not really effective feedback.

We really need regular carriers in our city. Like many things here in Pennsyltuckey, the housing numbers don't make a lot of sense. My neighborhood was originally divided into ten lots, which were sold individually over a space of some years back in the 1950s. When housing numbers were assigned, they gave the next sequential (odd or even) house number to whichever home was built next. This isn't uncommon at all in this area. Now, I have placed 10 inch letters on the side of our mailbox that the postman pulls up on, a big huge '10', but that didn't seem to help, as all my packages kept going to number 7.

Frustrating.

I used to work just outside of Baltimore, and part of my job was collections. Many of the checks sent to us were for $10.000 or more. But because of the way mail was routed, I could actually receive a check from another state more quickly than I could get one from Baltimore. One company used to 'accidentally on purpose' put insufficient postage on their envelopes, or otherwise misdirect the letter, so that it would be returned to them, through the tortuous process like the one you noted, and then they would remail it correctly...delaying our actual receipt of the funds for almost two weeks. When that happens once, that's just an oops. It happened so frequently we made the salesman go pick it up instead.

[mrmpa]

6. I've not received about 6 packages........

What occurs is that the sender uses an electronic address labeling system, so what happens is the address should read:

Name
2200 Elm Street
Unit 800E
Anywhere. OH 44020

When it goes through the labeling system it reads

Name
2200 Elm St.
800 East Street
Anywhere, OH 44021

I look at the routing of it via the USPS website and I can see where it goes to 44021 and labeled as not deliverable as addressed. They've gone to Virginia, Maryland and maybe back to me.

I recently checked a package I ordered 8 months ago, and it seems to be sitting in Omaha. It's been there for months.

I always contact the sender about addressing the package correctly and sometimes they follow my directions, but often they don't I then have to battle with the vendor about getting my package.

[edgineered]

2. Good luck calling them. They probably have rotary phones. nt

[mnhtnbb]

3. I sent a small package from Chapel Hill to my son in New Haven, CT recently

I took it to the post office--bought a padded mailer--had the agent weigh it
and stamp it.

It took 5 days!!! for that little package to make its way from Chapel Hill, NC to Greensboro, NC
(about an hour away from us) before it finally made its journey north. I think it was lost
in the post office in Chapel Hill. It had originally been estimated to have been delivered in New Haven
before it ever actually got out of NC.

Up until about a year ago, we had fabulous service from our post office. I've noticed
that things seem to have deteriorated at the branch we use (closest to home) and I've
started taking things to other branches.

[fizzgig]

4. did you get it sorted out?

what a pita.

[frogmarch]

5. Yes, about 10 minutes ago

the package came!

Earlier this morning our postmaster here phoned me to say that yesterday after I called her about the problem, she tried tracking it manually. She said that all she could figure out was that the package probably kept being dropped into the wrong bin at Grand Island, NE, and returning over and over to North Platte/Omaha. She said she emailed GI/Omaha, and that I should get the package today, which I did.

Whew. pita is right!