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.
Hello World Traveler. You're correct that mail can only be held at the PO for 30 days. I have 3 suggestions for you and hope one can be suitable for you.
1) if you have a neighbor or someone you trust you could have them take your mail and hold it for 3 mos. and you can pick it up when you get home.
2) you could rent a PO Box and have the mail temporarily forwarded to the PO Box. I don't think this idea will work because your mailbox would fill up quickly and it's possible any overflow mail would be returned to the sender. I'm not sure of the procedure for when a leased PO Box gets full.
3) If there is a friend or relative who is willing to accept your mail, you could have your mail temporarily forwarded to their address.
I can't think of any other solutions offhand . You could ask your local PO if they'd be willing to hold the mail for 3 months but I've never seen that done before and technically it's isn't permitted. I think they'd just quote the 30-day maximum rule for holding mail.
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I'd say that it is untrue that it's a law that one must pick up their mail daily. If it is a law I've never heard of it and it wouldn't make any sense to me. I believe the carrier is just being not nice and telling you an untruth. The issue a letter carrier may have if someone doesn't pick up their mail daily is that depending on the size of the mailbox it may get too difficult to fit in subsequent mail deliveries. If this were the case it's possible that mail could be returned to the sender. Most mailboxes that I see can handle quite a few days worth of mail and it is common for people to not pick up their mail daily. If you are concerned about your mail being returned, please contact a delivery supervisor or postmaster to get clarification on the matter. Again, I don't see any issue or problem with mail not being collected daily by the recipient unless the mailbox capacity is pretty small.
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There isn't really much to do Brittany except to be patient. Mail can go missing or be delayed for so many reasons. Most First Class mail isn't tracked either so it's not easy to tell where it is. 2-3 days delivery is the norm for most First Class mail in the US. If a piece of mail is misdelivered by a letter carrier it's hard to say when or if it will ever get properly delivered. Has your boyfriend mailed you items before to your current address and have there been issues in the past?
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I don't know officially how long you have to learn a new route before you're expected to be efficient. I would estimate up to about 3 weeks before you get to know it real well. Some people excel and catch on at a quicker pace then others. As far as I know there is no official amount of time before you are expected to learn a route. On the route I currently deliver I was the floater for that route before I got to do it full-time. What that means is that I filled in for the regular carrier on their day off or when they were on vacation or sick. In my case I knew the route quite well when I was awarded it full time upon the retirement of the previous letter carrier on that assignment.
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Funny that this is kind of a duplicate question and we are talking about duplicates. You are doing it correctly by choosing "no" when the question comes on the MDD asking "is this a duplicate mailpiece". The next screen should say "label scanned in error" and then let you choose "delivered". I get this message when I accidentally have scanned a mailpiece twice in a row. The scanner is asking if you have 2 mail pieces with the same USPS tracking number which shouldn't happen. It has nothing to do whether or not it was ever scanned in the office by a clerk. The MDD doesn't hold that information. I think the only time you'd get two packages with identical tracking numbers is if the mailer printed out the same label twice and attached it to two separate items. This would be cheating the USPS out of revenue. I've seen this happen before but it is rare.
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I probably won't be able to assist you with your specific situation but can't give my opinion. I personally think it's not true and the letter carrier is being a bit difficult. It can be annoying to a letter carrier to be interrupted when distributing mail to the cluster boxes but I suppose there are worse things to worry about. I only deliver mail to a cluster box community on occasion and if someone came up to me I'd use my judgment and likely give them their mail. It's a gated community and know of no mail theft issues whatsoever. In your case you even come with a key so it's clear that you are the resident for a particular mailbox and he shouldn't worrry about you taking from another mailbox. Please keep in mind that this is only opinion and it's not something I go through on a daily basis. In the office where I work, we have received no instructions that I can recall about allowing customers to retrieve mail from their cluster box while the letter carrier is servicing them. Letter carriers are tasked with keeping the mail secure but I think with any level of reasonableness they can do that especially with peole they may know personally. Thanks for your question though I don't know if you'll make any headway with your particular new letter carrier.
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I don't know how long you get to deliver a certified letter, but 3 minutes sounds reasonable to me per address. If the recipient is not home, it does take time to fill out a PS Form 3849 properly to leave in their mailbox. If the recipient is home, they need to sign the MDD and possibly a return receipt which also takes a bit of time. It also takes time to wait at a customer's door once you ring a door bell or knock. My general answer is however long it takes you to properly attempt/deliver a certified letter is what it takes. I don't know of any official time variances. I don't fill out PS Form 3849 in the office because there is a chance you won't need to leave a notice so it's wasting time to prepare them in the office before attempting delivery.
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