Mail delivery issues

So mail delivery in my mother's area (Clinton School area) is abysmal. Sometimes mail isn't delivered at all, other times one or two pieces only and sometimes not delivered until after 8pm. My mother spoke with the people in both Maplewood and Union Post Offices and they acted like they couldn't be bothered. She spoke with her neighbors and they are having the same issues and also getting no where when speaking to the PO's. She has not been getting bills on time and a check sent o her from Bergen County was never delivered. Who can she escalate this issue too?  TIA.

As said, many people have this problem and have complained. You might escalate it by complaining to the local congressional office, but I'm not sure that would result in anything. The time of delivery, there's probably nothing to do about that, some of it might be overload from the holidays.

I think this most effective thing to do would be to rely less on the post office, such as paying bills online. 

Try to get your local congressperson involved.

My friend had serious post office issues.She went to the congressman's district office. 10 days later the local postmaster called to resolve the issue. Two days after she got another call, from a regional supervisor. The issue was resolved. Then congressman's office called to follow up on the resolution.

It all depends on the congressional office is. This congressman is from southern NJ, a Republican conservative. He's re-elected because his constituent services are excellent. His office tries and always follows up.

As for bills, its best to do them online. If your mother can't do it online, maybe you should volunteer for her.

TV consumer reporter...ie 7 on your side

I'm in WO and had abysmal delivery.  Ended up getting a box at the local UPS store, no issues, I always get mail, never worry about vacation stops or package deliveries as it is considered a business address.  Does it cost me a lot? Yes, but for me, it's well worth it.

hk45 said:

 a check sent o her from Bergen County was never delivered. 

 Convenient, that.   You just can't rely on the mail service whatsoever anymore.  Best to just find other methods unfortunately. 

Here's some "helpful" links:

https://www.uspsoig.gov/hotline-helpful-links

Here's the contact info for us:

CONSUMER AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE
21 KILMER RD
EDISON NJ 08899-9631
Phone: 1-800-ASK-USPS

hk45 said:

So mail delivery in my mother's area (Clinton School area) is abysmal. Sometimes mail isn't delivered at all, other times one or two pieces only and sometimes not delivered until after 8pm. My mother spoke with the people in both Maplewood and Union Post Offices and they acted like they couldn't be bothered. She spoke with her neighbors and they are having the same issues and also getting no where when speaking to the PO's. She has not been getting bills on time and a check sent o her from Bergen County was never delivered. Who can she escalate this issue too?  TIA.

 Mountain Ave area . We used to get mail at 10:00am for years while mail was in Maplewood. Now ever since it comes from Union , we must be the last stop now , we get mail after 6:00pm some nights. One day we will get it before 2pm . We used to have the same mail person every day for years. Now a different mail carrier every day . Horrible service. 

oh and it took  more than 7 days for me to get my work check sent from Berkley Heights to Maplewood

I haven't received mail in 2 days. This is always a busy time for my mail box.Where is my mail? The mail carriers are so erratic. We used to have a great mailman. I must say the postal workers at the Maplewood Post Office go out of their way to be helpful.

Thanks all. Will try the local congressional office next.

I had this problem for about a week in early December. Researched it.  Found that my regular mail carrier and mail carriers on some other routes in Maplewood were delivering packages for UPS (under agreement between UPS and USPS) before delivering the mail. They were starting with package deliveries at 5 am and working well into the night.  Often they were running out of time before their mail delivery was completed.  Result was that I and much of my section of Maplewood received mail on only two days that week.  Call to the Union Post Office did nothing.  Thread on FB started by someone else on my mail delivery route brought the situation to the attention of a local mail carrier who brought it to the attention of the appropriate persons at USPS.  Daily mail delivery resumed, though I often found my mail waiting for me the following morning.  After 12/25, things seem to have normalized.

Advice:  Sign your mother up for Informed Delivery, an on-line notification service that will tell her (or you if you have her ID/password for the program) what mail she is supposed to be be getting each day.  Email usually arrives by about 8:30 am.  Then she will be able to tell if she is supposed to receive mail on a given day and at least some of what she should be getting.  This will help with the tracking of "lost" items.  The program enables users to report missing items from among those included in each day's email. Items I reported as undelivered often showed up in the next day's mail.

Postal employees are simply not given enough time to do their jobs properly.  If you're seeing different people on different days then they're most likely CCA's (city carrier assistant), and might not even be from town, so the entire route is new to them.  Considering all the weird places people like to hide their mailboxes, it takes them longer than your regular carrier to get through a route.  

All postal employees (CCA's and careers) are overworked, and the scanners they carry give a ping every 60 seconds showing their location.  If they aren't doing a street quick enough they're pulled into the office and asked why.  I worked as a mail carrier for a few months last winter.  Walking 13+ miles a day was fine, I actually enjoyed that part.  Working in the snow, freezing rain, etc, I was fine with.  It was the unrealistic expectations that got to me.  Many of the older employees were basically waiting out their time until they could retire.  I never held back mail to save time.  I never dumped circulars.  I wore my seatbelt (the crappy seatbelts get stuck and don't go on as easily as modern car ones).  Doing my job correctly took time.  When a regular was injured slipping on ice, I was given his whole route to cover, I'd never been on half of it before.  Second day on his route and I'm being asked by the postmaster why I'm not as quick as the regular was.  Mind you, the ice that he slipped on was still covering half of the town, and its only my second day doing the route.  I was finished before 5.  Not good enough.   They don't care that the route is new and its icy, their projection was that the route would be finished by X time.  It took me about a week to be able to do the route in the time projected, and apparently that is too long, I should have had it down pat on the second day.  And it isn't that management is heartless, they're getting heat from overhead on the regional level.  If your scanner sits still for more than 9 minutes, the postal facility in Edison gets a ping.  

In the town I worked for there used to be seven city routes (small town).  A efficiency expert came in and said that because mail was down it could be consolidated into six routes.  This didn't take into account the fact that more residences are being built on a regular basis, and that more people are buying kitty litter and copy paper and everything else off of the internet every day.   The first time I was sent to Dover to cover they were laughing and said "Don't throw the mail in the parcel lockers."  Seemed like a weird thing to say.  I get to the first cluster box (mailboxes at apartment buildings) and when I open it up I see the parcel lockers stuffed full of circulars, some magazines, and regular first class mail.  Serious WTF moment, and the fact that they joked about it before sending me out meant that they knew someone was doing it.  I wouldn't do that, I delivered what I was given, didn't pretend stuff was mis-sorted to throw into the 3M case to go back out the next day, I delivered what I had unless it was a legitimate mis-sort.  You know what happens if you decide to do the job correctly?  You can't do it as fast as the career who has had that route for 10+ years, and you can't do it as fast as the CCA who is dumping circulars or holding out first class mail for the next day, and you end up being pulled in and asked why it took you 31 minutes to do a street that was allotted 27 minutes.  Another time I was sent to Dover and given 13 packages to deliver.  Lower level supervisor helped me put the packages in the most logical order (easy to do if you know the town) and she said they were all in Randolph, it was a 25 minute drive to my first delivery.  As I'm heading out a higher up says it should take me about an hour to deliver all the packages.  Twenty five minutes to get to the first address, 13 packages to deliver, last delivery was about 30 minutes back to Dover, so getting from Dover to Randolph and back again took a total of 55 minutes without even adding in delivery time.  Of course when I get back they want to know what took so long because 13 packages should only take an hour to deliver.  At busier offices CCA's will put up with the ******** because the time needed to go Career is anywhere from 6-18 months.  But at the small town I was at I was told it would be 5-7 years.  

It might seem like I'm bashing other CCA's.  And yes, it's wrong to dump circulars, or hold mail to the next day.  But if someone is trying to keep their job so they can feed their kids and keep from losing their home, and are given unrealistic expectations and keep being pulled into the office because they can't meet those unrealistic expectations, some people who are desperate enough to keep the job will do what they have to.  And at least CCA's are offered health benefits.  I worked with RCA's (rural carrier assistants) who were on medicaid.  Imagine being in a job working 6, sometimes 7 days a week, and having to be on medicaid because you had no benefits and didn't even make enough to buy insurance because you're not considered full time.

I worked with some great people, and in the small town I was at they really do care about delivering the mail.  In larger towns (like Dover or Union), the CCA's are just plain burned out.  Some of the regulars I worked with knew where they could save time (legitimate, not dumping mail) on a route so that they could have a few extra minutes to check in on elderly customers, and were always careful to watch the time so their scanners didn't ping that they were there too long.  But they were also clear that while they were able to do this, it would be dying out very quickly since Big Brother is always watching and they're always checking the scanners to see where a minute or two can be saved.  The new carriers coming up won't be able to give the same service the old timers could.  We're not talking about taking 50 minute lunch breaks, or stopping to chat with every customer you see, but at two or three houses along a route to check in a couple of times a week to make sure an elderly customer who lives alone is doing okay.  These employees who did this really care, and they said it was heartbreaking to think that the next generation of mail carriers would not be able to do the same.  For many customers who live alone the mail carrier can be the only person they see every day.

They need to stop trying to run the post office like a business.  It isn't.  It is an important government entity that provides a valuable and needed service.  The people working there are being used up and burned out trying to meet unrealistic expectations.  Seeing it from the inside sickens me.

One year ago today I called my supervisor and said the wheel fell off my truck.  Usually I would have to call when a truck wouldn’t start (the starters go about 2x a year on these things) but this issue was new to me. They told me to put the wheel back on and drive it back to switch trucks.  They misunderstood and thought I meant that the steering wheel fell off, as apparently that happened to them about once or twice a year.  I sent her this picture to better explain the issue 

Thank you, Spontaneous, for your insider's view of what it's like to be a postal employee.  I had no idea.  It puts my complaints about getting misdelivered mail or mail delivered late in the day in perspective.  

It was heartbreaking.  Yes, there are slackers and people who cut corners.  But for the most part I worked with people who truly wanted to do a good job, but are just being hamstrung by unrealistic expectations being sent down from above

I don’t work there anymore, and don’t plan on going back.  But I still believe that the post office delivers a very necessary service and shouldn’t be expected to be 100% self funded.  There are certain things, especially in legal issues and government communication, that have to go through the mail. If you tried to renew your car’s registration online and they had to fedex you your new registration card, do you know how much that would cost?  And living in suburban areas we take for granted that the mail, FedEx, and UPS will all come down our street every day.  But in many parts of the country the only one who will deliver to every address every day is the post office, it just isn’t profitable for UPS and FedEx to give large portions of the country the same service we get here in the northeast 

Though part of the issue is the post office itself.  It seemed as though the unions try to pit employees against each other.  But reality is that the system as a whole only works if all the parts work together.  So putting city carriers against rural carriers against clerks, etc etc, is counterproductive 

@spontaneous, thanks for the insight from the perspective of a mail carrier.  I'd like to ask your opinion regarding the treatment that my mail gets daily.  The carriers fold the whole pile of it in half lengthwise, and shove it halfway through the mail slot, so it can sit there all day developing a permanent crease down the middle.  The mail slot is big enough to accommodate all standard sized cards and letters without folding, but they do this anyway.  Is this because they don't have enough time to separate the stuff that will fit through without folding from the stuff that won't?  

I hope they don't do that to mine after I get my hoped-for mail slot soon.  I specifically want a mail slot so that I won't have to worry as much about vacation mail.

Your mail carrier has two, sometimes three bundles they’re dealing with at once.  Mail in their hand, magazines and large mailers on their arm, and mass mailing type stuff.  Some carriers put the third bundle in the bag, I usually had it behind the mail.  No, they don’t have time to separate it out, they’re going through two or three bundles of mail while walking from one house to the next, grabbing it into one large bundle that they have to get into your mailbox or mail slot one handed

Something marked fragile, or do not bend, etc, will usually get special attention, but regular mail is done however is most efficient 

Anything that saves time they do.  I was aghast when in training they said that we were specifically supposed to walk across lawns. It just seems so rude, but nope, unless a customer calls the postmaster, or unless you see a sign to not walk on the grass, carriers are expected to walk across your lawn, and the route is timed assuming this.  

I would feel pretty bad if they were NOT allowed to walk on lawns.   Did many customers call to complain about this?

Another part of the problem, since the time of St. Ronnie, conservatives have wanted the P.O. privatized.  To accomplish this, Congress required the post office to fully fund its pension obligations.  This is at the expense of other improvements and maintenance.

Deliveries will fall behind.
Then, people will complain and agree to privatize the system because it sucks.

i read something where walking on a lawn was grounds to file a complaint with USPS...i believe on the USPS site.....which I thought was odd to specifically mention that to encourage people to report that.  I've only known 1 person where the lawn was off limits....everyone else...the lawn is for recreation and regularly walked/played on.

jerseyjack said:

Another part of the problem, since the time of St. Ronnie, conservatives have wanted the P.O. privatized.  To accomplish this, Congress required the post office to fully fund its pension obligations.  This is at the expense of other improvements and maintenance.

Deliveries will fall behind.
Then, people will complain and agree to privatize the system because it sucks.

 This is really the heart of it.  Good union jobs are ruined, and then people complain about the service.  My grandfather was proud to walk a postal route for 40 years.  It got his family through the depression.  Now we are making these jobs much less desirable.

The post office has an overall turnover rate of 40% for new hires in their first year.  But for CCA (City Cartier Assistant, the position you have to take to eventually get to be a regular carrier) the turnover rate in the first year is an astounding 59%

The post office tries to say it is because new hires don’t realize how much walking and lifting is involved and quit because of the physical demands of the job.  But in my short time there, and being sent to many different towns to cover (all CCA’s do this) I saw people we were just burned out emotionally, not physically.

"They need to stop trying to run the post office like a business."

And honestly, maybe some businesses need to have more consideration for their employees, too.  Sad and serious imbalances going on in this country.

What I meant by that was that I don’t think the post office should be 100% self funded.  Though if the pension issue hadn’t come up it wouldn’t be a problem.  But as an important needed service if it needs tax dollars to survive I am okay with that 

About walking on lawns, if my grandmother were still alive I would have been in fear of her finding out I was walking across lawns as she would probably have smacked me upside the head.  I was raised that you didn’t walk across someone’s front lawn.  Back yards were different, that was for playing.  And to be honest, even though it is just one person once a day, you actually can see the path worn on the lawns by the carriers.

So, since the last time I posted about my folded mail shoved halfway through the mail slot and left that way for the day to develop a permanent crease, I complained to the local post office and was told that the carrier was spoken to about it, but this carrier was temporary as our regular carrier would be on vacation for the next month!!!  Extra exclamation points being mine.  Who gets to take vacation for a month straight?  Anyway, this week, our usual folded and shoved halfway through the mail slot delivery system has resumed.  I assume our regular carrier is back.  Time to start complaining again, I guess.

Rob_Sandow said:

Who gets to take vacation for a month straight? 

I do, if I choose to take my four weeks of vacation all at once (and my coworkers don’t all pick the same dates). I also have a week’s worth of comp days — accumulated hours for working overtime — that I could add to it. 

FWIW, my hunch is that postal workers accumulate a bunch of overtime hours and possible comp time. Maybe spontaneous can shed some light on that.

If four weeks sounds like a lot of vacation — and it easily could to some — there’s this:

In 2017, the average worker with five years of experience at a company was given 15 days of paid vacation and the average worker with 20 years of experience was given 20 paid vacation days.

Note that those are averages.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/05/heres-how-many-paid-vacation-days-the-typical-american-worker-gets-.html

I don’t know how much vacation time regulars get per year, though I’m sure it differs by seniority, and I also don’t know if they can carry it over from year to year.  

With the CCA’s any vacation time not used up by the end of the year it would be cashed out, but that is in part because technically CCA’s are laid off after 360 days and then rehired five days later.  If the careers are able to carry over time then it is entirely possible, or older careers who get more vacation days might use up their vacation time in one chunk so long as the schedule allowed for it

Different industry, but I once worked with a guy who had accrued over six months of time off because he just never used it