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.
That is true. On our website you can track if a package has arrived at the delivery unit (your PO) if it is an express mail piece, it maybe can be intercepted before sent out for delivery (usually by a parcel post driver or someone other than the regular carrier). Often, the Express Mail items go out for delivery not long after they arrive at the PO after the carriers have started their regular routes.
It depends how far the letter as to travel to get to its destination. I think 1-4 days is the normal amt of time for a letter to reach its destination.
The Missing mail would likely be returnEd to the sender and not kept at the PO. if I were the carrier and I saw mail with a name I wasn't familiar with, I think I would deliver it and if each time the letter was not returned to me with a notice saying "not here", I would assume it was a valid delivery. Unless you live on a rural route, there is no obligation that I'm aware of to notify what names are valid at a specific address. I generally deliver it until told otherwise.
Not necessarily. Did you put the right name of your community but the wrong ZIP? If so, there is a good chance that the PO at the wrong ZIP city will cross it out and then the package will be sent to your community where it will then be delivered. If the name of the town and ZIP is incorrect on the package, and nobody at the receiving PO recognizes the address as belonging to your community then they may return the package to the sender as "NSS" meaning No Such Street or "NSN" meaning No Such Number. A lot may also depend on how savvy or caring the personnel is at the PO that originally receives the package to have it rerouted to your town where you could then get it delivered. I hope it works out for you. in the future, please remember that a correct ZIP is very important in an address. Thanks for writing!
EMT
Help Desk Technician
Claims Adjuster
Cynthia, that is a good question and I don't know the legal requirements (if any) to return any mail that is errantly delivered to your address, whether it is for a former resident or just delivered by mistake to the wrong address. Anyone who tells you otherwise I would question where they get that information. Most people I know aren't versed in the law when it comes to the US Mail. I do read that tampering with the US Mail is a federal offense but I don't interpret that discarding mail that was errantly given to you to be tampering with it. On the flip side, as much as that person has been a sore spot to you, would it be so hard to just write on the outside of the mail "person doesn't live here" and leave it in the mailbox for the letter carrier to have sent back to the sender? In theory, the letter may find its way back to the sender who may update their records and you won't get any mail from them anymore addressed to the former tenant. Just a thought. Thanks for writing.
I would generally say no, but it wouldn't hurt to try. In our office, I don't believe they usually allow this.
As long as the letter carrier knows that the unit is vacant and doesn't deliver it there, the SSI ck will eventually find its why back to the issuing govt agency where it will probably stay until they get a valid address from you as to where to send the SSI cks in the future.
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