OMG seeing red! Post office will not deliver to our house.

[Plumcreek]

Deltawave, if there are other houses very near you, also with long driveways, ask if the PO will set up one of those communal boxes. Ours serves ~16 addresses, has locked apartment sized boxes ~6" sq by ~16" long, and letters and magazines do fit. Have had 4 days of mail jammed in there. Then there are 4 rather large boxes where a key is left in your small box. Most packages fit in those, and I have had two full of packages, with two keys left in my small box.

I was unhappy when they changed to this system from the old domed mailboxes, but have come to appreciate the large package aspect.

[ReSomething]

I think DW is out in the country and not close to neighbors, but those cluster box things are also pretty resistant to mailbox baseball. A neighbor of mine just put in a new double sized box and painted it white for easy visibility and it got TOTALLED - I guess they could put a bottle jack inside of it and try to push ithe sides back out but the door is never going to fit properly again.

Folks around here also put out rubbermaid totes that they conceal in the fencelines and the carriers will place parcels in those.

[HappyTalk]

A substitute mailman once refused to leave a package on my front porch because of my dogs. LOL, my dogs are always in the house or in the backyard. They cannot access the front of the house. Our regular mailman laughed when we told him what had happened. He said that he liked coming to our porch because the front door is almost all glass and he liked seeing the JRTs jumping up and down. He called them the “pupcorn”.

[Ready_To_Riot]

That’s terrible. I had no idea there was a limit on how far up the driveway they would drive. My parents live in city limits, and most driveways are 1/4-1/2 mile long. They drive up the drive way and deliver. However, it might not be your mail that you get, but you get mail! lol needless to say, my family knows the people on the town well! There is only 1100 of them. And everyone gets everyone’s mail!

Where I live, my mail guy is really cool. He blares rap music in his mail truck and will come inside my fence to deliver my packages. I have 6 dogs that are usually outside, so this earns him cookies and a card during the holidays!

[AKB]

We live in suburbia and still have mail issues. UPS is wonderful but the US mail is iffy. When Amazon started sending our packages by US Mail, the mail man didn’t even try to deliver them. He just left slips at our cluster mailbox saying to pick up the package at the post office. I contacted Amazon and asked them to have the post office return the 40lb bag of dog food to Amazon and resend it by UPS. If that was not possible, I explained I would have to shop elsewhere. Now, the mailman brings our Amazon packages to the door.

If all of us refuse to go to the post office and instruct vendors to use UPS, the US Mail may have to deliver our packages to our homes.

[Mukluk]

I hate having separate addresses for the postal service (PO box) versus UPS/fed ex. A hassle when you try to order something on line since you have to figure out how they plan to ship it in order to give them an address. And sometimes they don’t know how they are going to ship!

[spaceagevalkyrie]

My mail idiot actually somehow hit my mailbox with the truck, refused to acknowledge it and when my mailbox was tilting at a precarious angle after some wind damaged it further, was kind enough to leave me a ‘your mailbox needs attention!!!’ note. Post office did nothing, as usual. :mad:

[Ambitious_Kate]

Having always lived rurally, mail was collected at the post office and we had a PO box.

Its for the reason of this thread that I always have things delivered Fed Ex or UPS. I don’t trust USPS with packages.

[Ambitious_Kate]

Oh! Just thought I would gripe! First week of Nov, I was switching out my bank account for a new one, and my pay check was dumped into the first (old) one instead of my new one, so I wrote a check and mailed to the new bank, rather than push across town to it on a friday after work. Same town, it took 10 days - TEN EFFEN DAYS to get to the new bank!!

Any more deposits or anything mailed, I will pay good money to overnight it fed ex or UPS. EF you, USPS!!!

[RacetrackReject]

At my office, for the last 7-8 years, the mail has always been delivered around 9-10am. In the last few months the delivery has gotten gradually later and now, they come when our offices are closed for lunch. There are no mailboxes, the mail person hand delivers the mail in our building to each office/address. This has led to the businesses only receiving our mail, and getting our mail picked up, 2-3 times a week.

We asked why this has begun to happen and were told that our mail now comes in on a truck out of North Houston that doesn’t arrive until late. Their suggestion was for us to put up a mail slot in the door. We can’t put 6 mail slots in the door (for each different office), so I guess we are supposed to sort through everyone’s mail every day to pick out which is ours? And now do we have to pay someone to take our mail to the post office and mail it too?

#firstworldproblems

[FrittSkritt]

I know this thread is three years old, but I have to gripe, too… I live in a semi-urban area, but a quiet neighborhood and have had my mail stolen at least three times despite having a lockbox on my condo’s big mailbox. (Now it doesn’t even lock, probably because the carrier keeps slamming the hell out of the doors and the thing now wobbles on its base.)

One time had an Abler (abprazole) package that was supposed to be a sign on delivery since it was international. Mail carrier went ahead and scanned it as “delivered,” yet brought it back to the PO… then they somehow managed to misplace in the pigsty that is their delivery center. Other times have requested a pickup for a package, left it outside my front door all day, and it was never taken. Called them at least three times and never got a response. Another time I watched the package tracking, expected it to be delivered when I was home, and never saw it. I flagged down his van as he was driving away and he had it sitting there on the floor next to the front seat. Really professional!

So yeah, USPS = completely worthless. Even using FedEx hasn’t helped, as they sometimes use a service that has USPS deliver once it gets to the local FedEx facility. (That time I had six vials of RVI stolen.)

[Haybert]

So, OP never updated. Gaaargh!!

I agree w/Guillelme, it’s a service I’d hate to see go.

I sell a ton on eBay and never hsve problems, plus free shipping supplies!

[Pearl_Girl]

I’m not sure, but I think we are being ripped off by lazy letter carriers

We have mail stops where we live since our area is pretty rural but they did away with rural route numbers and gave us street addresses years ago. Every few miles there are large banks of regular mailboxes in rows and people stop to pick up their mail on their way home. Our letter carrier knows what will fit into the boxes when he is sorting, so larger parcels stay at the post office and he automatically leaves the “sorry we missed you” notice. This is beyond annoying because we are about 30 miles from town.

(Apologies if someone here has already commented on what I am posting below. I got so excited when I found it, I had to share)

Today, I came across a form the USPS publishes called “Rural Customer Delivery Instructions” form 4232. It states “We want to deliver your parcels. If your parcel does not require a signature for delivery and will not fit in your mail receptacle, please tell us how you wish it to be handled when no one is home to accept delivery”. You fill out the form and they have to bring your packages TO YOUR DOOR. The one requirement is that your home is no more than 1/2 mile from the carriers route.

The part about how you wish it to be delivered when no one is home sounds to me like they are supposed to attempt delivery to your house, but have gotten away not making the little extra effort. Is that what that is implying because I would dearly love to throw that around the next time I have to go get a package, which will be tomorrow. And believe me, they will get an earful.