Hi all, I must say that I’m impressed with the U.S. postal system. I received a lovely postcard today from France. The person forgot to put the state and the zip code. There was just the city and street address.
Without giving it away, my city name exists in two different states: Texas and New York. So the fact that it got to my New York address (and not Texas) is amazing! And the postcard arrived in just 6 days from France.
This could easily have been lost and it wasn’t, so I am grateful. My card is from a new postcrosser, so I’m glad it didn’t get lost for her sake. And admittedly, I’m glad for my sake as well, since it is a gorgeous card.
I am so glad the postcard arrived to the correct address and in a short period of time. The U.S. Postal Service tends not to get many kudos so I think it’s great when we can celebrate a job well done. What a great story!
Who knows. I’m guessing that they got distracted. This is why I print out my addresses. This way, I’m sure that I have everything correct. I write everything else out, but I print the addresses just to be safe.
I live in a small rural mountain community in California population 750 with one really small post office everyone there is like family:). Interesting fact I live 2 blocks from the post office and they don’t deliver mail to my home address they give me a free PO Box.
I live rural crop fields area @zeroday, we’re similar that way. Population around 750, I talk with the post office ladies, they’re cool, no free PO Box for me though, you got lucky.
There are only 4 employees the postmaster, clerk and two delivery drivers. Half the town gets home delivery the other half get free P.O. Boxes. One carrier does just rural out of town addresses and the other does half town and half rural.
@cliffside - I have had my fair share of postal workers at the post office that make me question the USPS, but really, overall, we do truly have something special here. I forgot what thread it was, but there were quite a few international Postcrossers saying that they are jealous of our system! Cost had something to do with it among other reasons.
I mean … for the same cost essentially, you can send a letter to Alaska like anywhere else in the US…including all US Territories! Packages are more or less the same, although that has changed a bit in the past few years. Can you believe that the USPS carries mail and packages via a 9-mile mule train (one way!) to the base of the Grand Canyon for the Huvasupai people and others? Wild.
Must have re-calibrated the machines as the last few cards I’ve received have come through basically unscathed.
Regarding blue boxes… there was one nearby that had rotted through in a corner, allowing varmints and rain access, truly unpleasant. The other day, I witnessed it being replaced. The installer confirmed that the previous box should’ve been replaced long ago.
Another local box is missing its collection info label, causing me to wonder whether it was inactive? However, I threw in a test card to see if it would be received, and it was.
@roxsm I do a lot of mailing and shipping with the USPS. Many of their employees do an excellent job. For example, the clerks at my branch do a very good job.
Yes, compared to some other postal systems, they do a good job. But overall, their policies have had mixed results. Years ago, at a branch near my job, that branch changed their hours of operation to 9:00AM-4:00PM. Think about that for a moment. If you were a working person and needed to ship or purchase stamps, you were stuck. Yeah you could go there on your lunch time and wait along with 15 other people to be attended to.
I understand your viewpoint about processing mail. But I will disagree here. I had to refund a customer his purchase price on an auction lot he never received. I live in northern NJ; my customer in eastern PA…after three weeks nothing. They finally got the item; I told the customer to keep it. The USPS is getting into other stuff (passports, shipping supplies, greeting cards, etc.) when they should concentrate on their core mission.
This happened, too, at my last neighborhood post office before I moved! It was rather frustrating. I would have to use my lunch break to go to another local post office (closer to the office) to do mail related stuff. And because everyone was there during their lunch break, too, it would take up most of that hour unfortunately with the drive to and from, wait time, and service.
The sad news is that the post office that I had been using for 8 years before moving has permanently closed. That explains the negligence in terms of the building’s maintenance.
There’s a funny, short, non-fiction book written by Marc Fischer called Deliverance in which he writes about some of his frustrations in dealing with certain branches of the Chicago Post Office. Attached is a pdf of the book offered free by the book’s publisher.
It’s amazing that the same USPS that can do a miracle like this also delivers my mail regularly to an address about two miles away because it can’t figure out the difference between a 1 and a 7.
