MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
I must first start with my disclaimer that we are poorly trained in what the regulations or SOP are when it comes to certain situations that come up. I can't say what is legal or not regarding your question. I do think it is inappropriate for the postal worker to ask you anything about returning mail.
You don't need to explain to any USPS employee why you are returning the mail. It is none of our business. As long as it is an unopened, first-class letter, you should be able to just write "refused" on it and have it returned. Personally I would just discard any unwanted mail. I've received debt collection letters in the past and have just ignored them and not returned them. There are certain classes of mail where we won't return to the sender because the sender has paid a pre-sorted standard rate (which is lower than the first-class rate). In that case, we just recycle any unwanted mail.
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I wouldn't recommend it unless you put a stamp on the envelope. The reason I say this is because the mailbox is only supposed to be used for US Mail with proper postage. That being said, if you leave the envelope in the mailbox clearly marked for the recipient company or resident with no postage it's possible the letter carrier would notice it and just leave it in the mailbox. That is what I would do but I can't speak for another letter carrier who isn't paying attention and just takes an envelope that looks like it could be outgoing mail. If you put the payment envelope in the mailbox with the address and postage it could be taken as outgoing mail but you can rest assured it will get to the recipient within a couple of days as a regular piece of mail. If possible, could you find an alternate place to put the payment or pay electronically?
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I'd recommend taking it to the Post Office to make sure you are paying the right amt. You should just be able to put it in a letter size envelope (if it fits) and seal the envelope well. A proper address should also be written on the envelope where the bottom line is the Country of Destination (in your case either UK or Scotland). My quick search says that a 2 oz. letter to Scotland would be $2.21. If you are interested, you can go to www.usps.com and search for calculate a price and after answering several questions you can get a rate. 2 stamps would be equal to .98 so that would be insufficient to mail to Scotland. The minimum price for international mailing is $1.20 I think. Thanks for writing and I always say it's better to put too much postage on instead of too little. This way you lessen the risk of an item being returned for insufficient postage.
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It's odd for someone to say "it's on the truck" when the tracking seems very non-specific and sounds like it hasn't been updated. 8 days is too long for a certified letter to reach you unless the item was missorted en route and was either misdelivered or is sitting at a PO and nothing is being done with it. I don't know what to tell you to do except to wait a few more days. After that, you could contact the sender and say you never received the letter though they would have the same information as the online tracking.
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They really shouldn't be taking your mail into their unit or house or apt if you don't shared the same living space with them and they aren't responsible about giving it to you. It may not be easy but you could politely ask the landlord and girlfriend and son to maybe leave your mail in the box or slip it under your door if that's accessible or appropriate. I agree it's not good for you to need to be concerned if someone is taking your mail and giving it to you at their convenience. I know it's not the answer you'd like to hear, but a PO Box rental would solve this issue. The drawback is that it costs money and is probably less convenient than getting mail at your residence. The USPS would probably not get involved in separating out your mail and putting in to a different mail receptacle unless the unit was officially designated an apt for mail receiving purposes. I don't know how one would go about doing this or the complexity of it. We have a database of authorized addresses that we go by to deliver the mail and if there aren't multiple units designated in the same dwelling, all of the mail would normally be put together.
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I think it is inappropriate to solicit your own business while delivering a route for the USPS. I haven't heard of anyone being disciplined for doing this, but I would think that it is technically not allowed. I know of a couple of co-workers who do home improvements, landscaping, or sprinkler work as side jobs but don't know if they actually try to get business while delivering mail. If they want to do a postcard mailing to try and get business I suppose that would be fine as long as proper postage was paid for the mailing and they didn't just put their own postcards in mailboxes while delivering the mail and not affixing postage to it.
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I am not sure what you mean by this question because you first say that 100 & 102 are together in one mailbox yet you then reference a box that says 102. If you truly have two separate mailboxes for two separate addresses and is clearly labeled I'm not sure why the letter carrier doesn't separate the mail between the two addresses. You could leave a note on the shared mailbox that there is a separate mailbox for 102 and ask them to put the mail there. If this isn't resolved with a note, you could always contact the PO and speak with a delivery supervisor or a manager to register your request.
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