Post Office rant! No wonder they're in trouble.

John Pollman

Member
Messages
1,332
Location
Rochester Hills, MI
I'm sick of the Post Office!

No wonder they're in trouble. I think I'm going to have to start using UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc. for important documents. I went to the post office on Friday February 01 at about 11:00 a.m. and mailed the packet. According to the instructions, it had to be in their hands by February 06 in order for me to get the rate that they had locked. It looks like rates are going up now. I just checked my email and got a note from the Wells Fargo rep and as of this afternoon, she still hasn't received the documents! WHAT THE HECK? I live about 20 miles north of Detroit and they were being mailed to Minneapolis. It was sent first class. As of the time she sent the email, it had been SIX FULL DAYS and they still weren't there! The stupid Post Office is USELESS!!! I'm sorry, but that's UNACCEPTABLE. I have a feeling that their ineptness is going to cost me BIG.

I pay most of my bills online, but there are only about two checks I write every month. One of them is mailed to Texas and I've had the check CLEAR THE BANK two days after I wrote it.

I'm about done with the Post Office!
 
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In house mail time can be consuming and easy to deny. Once received ask for a scan of the postmark. If it was marked the day you dropped it off or the next, they had it a few days later, as in 2 to 4 days, not seven. I do find it amusing though that I can mail letters to New York, NY and to Antioch, CA (four hundred miles away) and have the New York letter beat the in-state letter by a full day. As for Post Office business savvy; no one runs a business model that is based on losing billions a year and stays afloat.
 
When we moved out of California in 2010, I was still waiting for my vote-by-mail ballot for the 2008 election. Riverside county records showed both my wife's and mine were mailed at the same time. Her's came. Mine????
 
hey folks maybe you should follow them in there shoes for a day or two, or maybe we could go back tot he pony express? i have sorted mail and seen what they mail carriers on foot or vehicles have to endure.. its not a gravy job as some may think.. government managing the business may not help. last fall i watched as a time study guy followed a on foot mail carrier deliver mail, he was making notes one every little thing the guy did, when dropped off our mail i asked the guy why he had do a time study he can only walk so fast and that its nice to say hello or have a quick conversation with the carrier, if they get the mail done each day that should be sufficient.. the mail carrier about chocked and thanked me later and the time study guy couldnt leave fast enough.. they deliver our mail in all weather, would you want to do that?
 
I'm sick of the Post Office!...got a note from the Wells Fargo rep and as of this afternoon, she still hasn't received the documents! ...SIX FULL DAYS and they still weren't there!...

I'd bet even money that the letter is sitting somewhere in the mailroom/sorting area - AT WELLS FARGO! In large corporate offices, stuff can often sit for days waiting for the (usually newest hire) mail sorter to get things sorted and delivered. Of course, the Post Office always gets the blame, though.

Having dealt with WF, some years back, on a re-fi, I know they can be awfully slow. I suspect the problem is actually theirs, not yours, but you'll never get them to admit it.
 
I'd bet even money that the letter is sitting somewhere in the mailroom/sorting area - AT WELLS FARGO! In large corporate offices, stuff can often sit for days waiting for the (usually newest hire) mail sorter to get things sorted and delivered. Of course, the Post Office always gets the blame, though.

Having dealt with WF, some years back, on a re-fi, I know they can be awfully slow. I suspect the problem is actually theirs, not yours, but you'll never get them to admit it.

Ding, ding ding!! We have a winner!
 
I'd agree with Larry, those guys do work their rears off. If they'd make the bulk mail a lot more expensive, they'd probably cut out a lot of work with all the flyers and junk mail I have to throw away. I maybe get one or two actually letters a week that are expected, the rest 5 or 6 pieces (daily) get tossed as I walk past the trash without even opening them many times.

So would they not accept faxed or scanned copies of the packet John? Most will anymore but sometimes have to bug them to do so.
 
No, she actually asked me if I could fax or scan and email the packet. The problem is that there are a LOT of pages and it would have been a real task to scan and email all of them. Being that I had six days until the deadline, I figured that there was plenty of time. (Six days IS plenty of time to mail something from Detroit to Minneapolis) I called the rep a couple hours ago and left a voice mail and haven't heard back yet.
 
Ditto what Larry said. I've known a couple of letter carriers, and their job is anything but easy.

I wonder how much money the Post Office would save by eliminating the time study guys. ;) One carrier I knew told stories of having his footsteps timed, then being told he needed to step faster. He was also told he was taking too many steps from one house to the next, so he was ordered to walk across peoples' lawns. He also got in trouble for actually talking to his customers or giving treats to various dogs along his route.
 
Hat's off to Larry :thumb:

WF is about the worst people to deal with. I once had to fax the same documents 4 times because they said they never got them.

Personally, I would like the postal rate to go up more than a few cents each time. Raise it a quarter and forget about it for a few years.

I also don't necessarily expect a government service to be profitable. It's a service for the people. Does anyone think that if all of a sudden they made billions of dollars each year in profit that our taxes would go down?
 
Well John you guys have such excellent courier services in FedEX and Brown that i would use them more if i were living in the US. I cant complain about USPS each time i have had a online item or something shipped using them never had a problem.

Of course if you want a comparison for a reality check i could provide some insight to what happens where i came from. At least in this case your post is getting through. I dont know how many plain ole occasion cards we have had sent to us from SA that have never arrived. Anything slightly looking like its got potential to have more than paper in it goes missing.

In my view the rates of any government postal service are too low. They do that because of it being a service to the masses and tryingto make it affordable, but i thing that argument is long gone now what with cell phones and text. One only has to consider the penetration of something like text in even the poorest of the poorest countries and one can see the historical letter post is a thing of the past just like printed Newspapers and Magazines. I still like it and use it for business but I think they could jack the rates and use the cash to make the service viable.

I do think they have a wonderful scheme going with the flat rate boxes. That to me is a real winner for business especially ecommerce.

As most have said would not be surprised if the corporation mail room was the issue. :)
 
And what is up with Fax Machines? Over the last couple of months I've had people give me a hassle because I don't have a fax. Now yes, technically I could get my modem hooked up to the phone line and run some fax software but really, what about email? Even my ATM reciepts are emailed to me any more. Sheesh....
 
Ditto with what Larry said also... a number of years back I worked for an airlines that handled mail contracts.... as a ramp rat, I was assigned to the post office to haul the mail from the sort station to the various flights... even back in the '70's it was a pretty efficient operation... a lot less mechanized than it is now.... I was in SFO and the sort station was a pretty old building on the airport before they moved over to the new building.... mail was trucked in from all over northern California, the trucks were backed up to a dock and the various mail bags were hand unloaded and sorted by destination to the next sort station.... if the origin post office put the letter in the wrong bag, it got a scenic trip to your destination, other wise, it could have gone through three or four sort stations before getting to final.... the mail was loaded into the various carts to the various airlines, transported to plane side and loaded.... there were times when the planes were full or out of balance or whatever and mail did get left behind - rare occasions - but it did happen. In those days we also had first class mail that wasn't considered air mail... mail came out of the sort station in 3 bag colors....orange was air, blue was international and signed for by carriers, and green that was first class, magazines, junk mails, etc.... on top of this we also had the parcel bags which were much bulkier because of the packages.... same color combinations. We loaded blue international mail first, orange airmail next and then the express packages from the express carriers... in those days we still had R.E.A. and this was before UPS, FEDEX, DHL, EMORY, and all the courier companies, then airlines cargo packages and the balance of space was for the "green mail".... which was in fact supposed to be surface mail, i.e., it was supposed to be trucked to the next destination.... now a days, all mail is first class, priority or express... it's handled much the same way, express first, priority, then first class... problem is now that much of what used to fly is trucked to destination, especially out of the more outlying cities... my mail is trucked to Knoxville, or Chattanooga and may or may not fly out to the next destination.... The zip code system was developed to speed up the sort system and probably did to some degree... now the bar code is being used more and more for the mechanization of the sorts...

On the junk mail, it would probably save the post office considerable monies to discontinue it, but mostly now that is a major source of their revenue... I'm not sure enough general mail is generated now to keep the post office going. I'm sure there are many places that costs could be cut, but as we've all noted, this is more a government service than a real business.
 
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