Post office delivery problems
 

:rant-rave:Just curious if anyone else is/has had delivery issues with the Lady Lake post office. When I talk to people around the community, I almost always get a horror story about misdirected/misdelivered/delayed mail. I have experienced it with home delivery (nearly 200 pieces of mail appeared in a parcel locker one day with a range of postmarks spanning two months) and business delivery (letters being delivered to neighboring businesses, letters being returned to sender because the address is not 100% correct and even letters being delivered to businesses clear across town). I remember the days when I knew my mailman by name, greeted him, passed the time and thanked him for getting that piece of mail to me that had the wrong house number but he knew was mine. No "return to sender" because they misspelled my street name. The issue is never a one time thing, it's constant. My interaction with the postmaster usually ends with him trying to place blame on me. His reasoning for the nearly 200 pieces of mail being held/delayed was that I didn't pick up my mail often enough. His personnel failed to follow the proper procedures regarding that mail, yet he felt it was better to blame me. I read about a person who had a 5 figure check delayed for several months do to issues with this post office. I've experienced problems, read about them, spoke to Congressman Ginny Browne-Waite and spoke to countless residents about them. Is it just me??:grumpy:

I have had no problems in 6 years.

Must be you............sorry 5 years and no problems.

it's often several days before i get to the mailboxes and have never had a problem in my 10 years.
if my small box gets to cramed the postal folks bag it all and put it in one of the larger parcel boxes, leaving the key in my regular small box so i can pick up the bag when i get to the postal station i do know our contract postal carriers casually and they're aware that my limitations often mean i'm irregular about picking up my mail but i think all residents in my village get equal treatment.
when i go out of town on occassion i place a hold on my mail and our
contract carriers go thru a procedure similar to the times when i'm home but unable to manage to get to the mailboxes regularly.
sorry to her not everyone gets satisfactory service. wonder if it will be better or worse if we ever get our own "official" postal station

Yes I have had some problems. We are snow birds but we do not have mail addressed to our old address forwarded, we have it collected and shipped to us. That works just fine. When some of our friends send mail to our Villages address about half the time they get it returned, about half the time it gets delivered. I tell them to just send it to the up north address that way I am sure I will get it just a few days late.

Yes. We are snowbirds and we have received three other peoples mail.

We have lived in The Villages for two years and have had no problems with the mail. Occasionally, we get mail in our box which is not ours. We simply put it in the box labeled for wrong mail. Very convenient. Maybe some of the problem is that some people who get the wrong mail do not put the mail in the appropriate box for misplaced mail.

We've had great service from the LL Post Office. When we left for the summer, our mail was forwarded to our Canadian address, no charge. And when we returned, we just called the post office and they took the "forward" off.

A few times we've received mail for other people or for previous owners. I just put in back in the box and push it onto the floor so they can resort it.

The misdirection of mail seems to happen occasionally no matter what city you live in.

I have had neighbors drop off mail to me and I have done likewise...many times.
If I sort the mail at the box, I drop other peoples mail in the designated box. I have gotten hand delivered bank statements opened by neighbors by accident
I know our numbers are legion...but still in all, our postal service has room for improvement. Maybe my tip needs to be larger next year!!;)

I always check my mail before I leave the mail stop. If there is mail that is not for me, I just put it all the way through the box onto the floor in the working area.

The mail person will put it in the correct box the next day.

That is better than trying to track the person down and try to deliver it - especially if they are not home.

We are not postmen.

Yes, I always sort my mail at the mail box and put the items that aren't mine back in the outgoing mail box. Sometimes, I find it in my box again (and again and again). It doesn't always get to the right person the next day. I don't always have a pen to write that it doesn't belong to me. Unfortunately, not everyone does this. And, frankly, as you say, we are not postmen. I have never had such a problem with mail anywhere else I have lived. Yes, I sometimes got mail that wasn't mine, but that was extremely rare...perhaps an item or two a year. Here, I have had many, many times where it is 10 or more items a DAY. Yeah, I'm frustrated. I hate that I didn't get my birthday card until 6 weeks after my birthday even though it was postmarked 2 days before. I hate that customers send me letters and checks and they sit in an office across town that doesn't place them back in the mailbox, holds them for a week or two and then calls to say "hey, we got ten letters here for you". It has happened at two different home addresses and two different business addresses. But, apparently, from the posts here, my situation is rare. Glad to see it's not widespread. Sad to see that it is following me around.

I do know of one case where a real mess has been created. Two people who own homes here near each other with the same last name. One is a snowbird and has his mail forwarded. The other has moved here permanently. The permanent resident's mail has been forwarded to the snowbird. According to the post office, it will take at least 7-10 days to "find" the missing mail. I wonder how mail that has been incorrectly forwarded be found. Another person has it, may or may not have returned it, so how do they plan to find it?

The joys of subcontractors to sort/deliver the mail to the various mailboxes here. Something tells me if regular postal employees were used, things would be a lot better and a lot more efficient.

The mail service to our box is superb. The one complication (aggravation) is that "overnight" mail being sent to us through USPS is not delivered to the house like it is suppose to be. It is rolled up and stuffed into our mail tube at the mail station. If it is an envelope that requires a signature, it is never brought to our house, a notice is put in our box and we have to drive to Lady Lake and stand in line to get it. Yet, UPS and Federal Express both deliver to our door.

We talked to the Post Master about it and receive a different story each time. The most common one seems to be that the postal union does not have to deliver over 1/2 miles away from our postal station. HUH??????

We receive lots of important overnight deliveries because of our business. We tell people and companies to NOT use United State Postal Service.

The only misdirected mail we receive is for the previous owners of our home. And virtually all of it is junk mail which I just sort at the pickup place and drop in the slot designated for what they call 'misthrows.' No big deal.

As snowbirds, the first time we set up forwarding was confusing. No one told me it was my mistake; I realized afterwards that it was. Besides filing the forwarding cards, I have to let BOTH post offices know, so the one we're heading to (whether here or up north) knows to hold our mail for, say, a week before we're showing up there.

We frequently use carrier pickup via usps.com, and in all this time only once did they fail to pick up; instead, they were here the following morning for it.

I would have to say one sort-of negative about the Lady Lake PO: It's extremely difficult to reach them by phone. Generally when we need to walk into a post office, we go to Oxford (small post office with exceptionally friendly folk working there) which is close to us.

Given the volume that the Postal Services handles, IMHO they do a pretty remarkable job and at rates a lot more reasonable than postal services in other countries we have spent time in!

delivery problems
 

I just retired from one of the local po's. the problem with the villages mail is that it is not postal employees delivering the mail here. they are contract carriers who bid on the right to deliver. the contract carrier who wins the bid can use anyone he chooses to hire, to deliver the mail. they may have no idea how the mail has to be cased and delivered. i know of cases where the contract carrier went to a day labor pool and hired people only for a day at a time to save money. it is the postal service's latest way to save money. that is the only thing that counts, not customer service. it's interesting that the postmaster did not tell you that he is using contract carrier, non-career people.

Our mail has been going back and forth for about 6 weeks.
and I was told that someone with a name like ours put in a change of address
so our mail maybe going ? We seen the PO 3x at Lady Lake, called our old PO
still the same when in line at Lady Lake PO all in line had the same thing going
But we need our tax info etc? and now I have a Ret pay check late?
Da Sgt :shrug:

I have not appreciated the United States Postal Employees enough until we came here. I sell ebay and see them almost every day.

Nothing serious has gone awry here......yet, but the mail is not carefully sorted.

Last year we had a real mess with the mail not being forwarded properly from up north. It turns out the mistake was being made down here. This year things are okay. The only problem we've had is receiving someone else's mail once or twice. The other thing that bugs me, though, is when I called the number for the local Lady Lake post office, I can never get through to a person, the phone is always busy. I wondered if it was off the hook. I then called another post office number, might have been up north, and spoke to someone about the problem, and they told me to send an email. The post office is required to respond within a certain time frame to emails. Hope this helps.

I live in a small town in SW New Hampshire and what I think about contract carriers can't be printed! :swear: I could go on for days about ours. And the fact that they can hire someone else just makes it worse. We now know the days when ours uses her father to deliver the mail---we don't get any!

I am sad to learn that I will have to deal with this when we move to TV. Oh well :sigh:.

But--better to be at TV with a contract carrier than here with a contract carrier.

Overnight mail
 

Your overnight mail should be delivered or attempted at your house. If it is a certified letter or Express mail then it needs to be attempted at your door. And no the postal unions do not have a 1/2 mile rule. The convience of having a postal central delivery point is to make it faster for the carrier to deliver the mail to alot of homes at one time. But according to postal regulations all accountable mail (certified letters and Express mail and registered mail) needs to be attempted at the door. Tell that to ur postmaster and see what he says about that!

If you are not picking up ur mail every couple of days or everyday if you get a lot of mail then the carrier will remove it from the box and they should hold it for 10 days. After 10 days they are required to return the mail to sender but they are supposed to leave u a notice that they have done this. Unfortunately the carriers who deliver to the central delivery point don't know u from Adam. They just go by name and address on the letter or magazine. If they are experienced carriers for to your delivery area they might know or remember where u live if it has a bad address on the mail piece. But also the fault lies with the USPS for having contract carriers instead of career carriers who will stay around for 20 years or more rather than the 6 months or less that contract carriers stay.

Not necessarily. We had our mail forwarded to TV, and it was waiting for us when we arrived. Everything worked fine, but suddenly the mail stopped coming here. A friend checked our house in Utah, and she said the mailbox was stuffed with mail. Apparently somebody at the PO decided to deliver the mail (and cram it into the box) instead of forwarding it. My friend took out all the mail and sent it to me, and she also taped up the mailbox with a note that the mail should be forwarded. It's working OK again, but keep your fingers crossed. The PO folks in our hometown are regular post office employees.

Yeah, I learned that is what they are supposed to do, but that didn't happen. Mail continued to be put in my mailbox. I suspect that the delivery person stuffed what they could in the box and then dropped the rest in a bin. If there was room the next day, they's put some of the overflow back in the box. I think it just stacked up until they realized that they were never going to catch up, so they put it all in a parcel box. Definitely against postal regulation. In fact, it's a federal crime to delay mail delivery. I doubt the culprit was prosecuted or even fired.

Well it is ur mail and ur responsiblity to pick up ur mail. The only thing the carrier did wrong was to place it in the parcel locker. But the carrier was trying to give u the benefit of the doubt by doing this. But after awhile even the parcel locker fills up and they have to return ur mail to sender. We only deliver the mail to u and when it is not picked up we have to service our other customer which is the mailer. The rules are and what most request is that it is returned to them. So the only delay of mail was on ur part...not picking it up and I am sure u would not like to be prosecuted for that. ;)

Well it is ur mail and ur responsiblity to pick up ur mail. The only thing the carrier did wrong was to place it in the parcel locker. But the carrier was trying to give u the benefit of the doubt by doing this. But after awhile even the parcel locker fills up and they have to return ur mail to sender. We only deliver the mail to u and when it is not picked up we have to service our other customer which is the mailer. The rules are and what most request is that it is returned to them. So the only delay of mail was on ur part...not picking it up and I am sure u would not like to be prosecuted for that. ;)

Sorry, YOU are wrong.

You assume that I wasn't picking up my mail regularly. I never said that. I picked up my mail daily most times. It was rare that I didn't pick it up every day and I never missed it two days in a row. It was a lame excuse put forth by the postmaster. Postal regulations state that if the mail doesn't fit in the box, ALL mail should be pulled and a notification placed in the box directing the customer to pick up their mail at the post office. That never happened. I continued to receive mail on a daily basis and never had any indication that there was excess mail being held. Putting the mail in the parcel box was not the "only" thing the employee did wrong. The postal worker did not give me the benefit of the doubt. They failed to follow postal regulations and caused some of my mail to be delayed up to 2 months. The parcel locker didn't "fill up". The delayed mail was all placed there on one day, not over a period of MONTHS. The mail stacked up in the little hut for those months. The delay of mail was on "ur" coworkers part (or perhaps YOU were the culprit), not mine. In my opinion "ur" coworker was lazy, negligent and criminal. :cus:

The mail service here has been excellent. The only challenge is picking up your mail at rush hour, shortly after the carries have left. The mail station is usually quite crowded, and sometimes down right dangerous, all those carts and cars zooming in and out! Other that that, the mail service here is wonderful!

We're having the same sort of trouble with mail here in the north. Mail for neighbors in our box, delayed mail, neighbors leave our mail between the front doors, etc. I have fond memories when our local postman delivered the mail twice a day but that was a long time ago. I have been doing everything I can to move to electronic statements and anything else that can be moved away from the USPS system. I realize it isn't practical for those running a business but with USPS losing money and lowering service standards, it looks like the situation will get worse. I hope to be completely electronic by the time I get to TV.

Anyone that has contract with the mail (including contractors and helpers) are screened by the Postal Service. The person is required to be finger printed, a background check is required, and they must have a clean driving record. Once the person is cleared then a badge is issued and they can start work. Using day labor is not an option.