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 sounds absolutely wrong what is done. The only time that a worker can open a package that i know of is if it is Media Mail. That class of mail is subject to inspection if a worker wants to verify that the contents qualify for the Media Mail rate. Does the worker say why he opens then packages? I haven't heard of your situation before.
Generally, no. The reason is that if an item shows up after the mailman has left for their route, the new incoming mail may not even have been sorted yet. Furthermore, most POs have policy against giving out mail over the counter that is intended to be delivered by a letter carrier. I can't speak as to what your specific PO would do, but generally the answer would be no as stated above.
As far as I know if a letter requires a signature to be delivered (i.e. registered or certified), the letter carrier should make an attempt to get a signature at the intended address and not just leave a PS3849 Notice of Attempted Delivery. You may call the Post Office to have the item redelivered and you may leave the signed notice for the carrier to pick up and leave the registered item if all parties feel comfortable doing that.
ST, I'm not sure what happened in your situation. Some USPS carriers may be trained or take it upon themselves to do things differently than others. If the letter carrier saw the one letter in your mailbox but the rest of the mail taken in (by you), they might think it's mail for a person no longer living there and return it to the sender "Attempted, Not Known" or "Unable to Forward" or something else. It seems likely that this is what happened and the letter wasn't stolen though I can't says for sure.
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I'm not sure of the answer to this. I think you have to pay postage if the mail was sent to you at a rate called presort Standard. The reason is because if you just leave that type of mail in your box for the carrier to take back they can refuse to take it, or, if they do take it back, it will likely just be discarded into a recycling bin at the PO. That type of mail is called NOVM (No Obvious Value Mail). There will be no effect on you continuing to get that type of mail in the future because the mailer has no notification that you want to be taken off their mailing list. The most effective way to have these mailings cease would likely be to call the mailer or email them to be removed from their mailing list. I have found this effective for reputable emailers but have never tried it with traditional paper mailers. Thanks for your question.
I don't know the answer to this for sure. I believe the mail would be delivered to the building in one bundle with the other businesses mail mixed in if there are no specific suite #'s. For you to have your mail delivered separately, I believe you would need to have a specific address which is different from the rest of the building (i.e. the same street address, but a suite # associated with it). You could consider renting a PO Box, but that would have a cost plus would require a trip to your local PO to retrieve your mail. Most of the mail that we deliver is sorted by a machine into delivery order so if your address doesn't have a separate suite number, a letter carrier probably wouldn't segregate your mail just because you have a box with your business name on it. It's my pleasure to assist you on this forum and thank you for writing.
Nobody should be putting your mail on hold for 10 days without your permission unless there was some obstruction to your mailbox which would prevent delivery. I believe that via USPS.com somebody could technically put a hold mail request pretending to be you, but that wouldnt be legal and haven't heard of that occurring. I hope you can find out why this happened.
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