So. Last week when I left town for Christmas, our office complex had three mailboxes located at the front of the complex for us to drop the daily mail.

Today, a week later, they are gone! This is an office complex with 28 buildings with many having multiple tenants.

No notice to us, the users of these boxes. Just picked up and gone and no notification as to where we are supposed to drop the mail.

UPS and Fed-X did not remove their boxes!

How to increase profits = raise prices and decrease service. Only works in the short term, people vote with their feet and their wallets.

End of rant!

Update -- Today, I asked our mailman about it. He says he thinks they were vandalized and thinks they will be replaced but has no information as to the timeframe.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sailor1911,

I have started a spreadsheet of sort to keep track what the USPS says it is going to deliver to me as opposed to what actually arrives.
Looks like 85% delivered right now. And many of the actual deliveries are 1 or 2 days late.
I keep wondering when the entire USPS system will completely collapse.

Yes they are disappearing and it's frustrating.

You can go to the USPS website and there is a function to find the blue drop boxes and other postal facilities.

For example, here it is on their website. Plug in your zip code and go to the 10 mile radius, etc. They always list ALL of the blue drop boxes at the post office, so you have to keep scrolling to find other locations where the blue drop boxes are. You can use this and put your location in to see what is left in your area. LINK
.

The removal of the blue boxes for pick-up is the most confusing thing to me... They complain that people use the mail less often, but then they make it harder to send something out.

Short-term cost cutting for long-term problems.

There very well might be good reason for removing these drop boxes.

I have read that enterprising miscreants will fish your outgoing mail from these boxes and look for envelopes contains bill payments.

They then have a check of yours, with all of the bank boiler-plate stuff, your return address, the sequence number of the checks that you are currently using, and your signature.

I am in the Orlando area; an alert teller in a SunTrust branch in Savannah caught two scum-bags trying to cash "paychecks" that had been created on my account, around $1,700.00 each. At my request, they sent me a photocopy of one of the phony checks, which looked very much like my real ones, including a copy of my signature in my handwriting.

(Edit to correct the spelling of "two." Steenkin' auto-correct.)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: V-Tail,

What V-Tail just said. Same exact thing happened in my town back in October. USPS removed the box from outside the Post Office. (and the interior was coated with some sort of glue like substance from the fishing attempts)

A few days later they replaced it with a new one that has a thin slot only. (no tilt-in basket)

Amazon, FedEx, and UPS are going to continue to eat USPS’s lunch until it’s pretty obvious to everyone that they are a lost cause.

Honestly, I don’t even know why they exist right now. Virtually every piece of mail I get from them is junk.

I've done a similar thing back to them. Mayor may not work for your situation.
In years past I bought those large rolls of stamps for my business and personal mail. Now I buy the small book that has, I think 20, and it lasts me a year or more.
Online bill pay and other electronic communications do all that and save me a lot of money and time (and frustration of dealing with the USPS).

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:

Honestly, I don’t even know why they exist right now. Virtually every piece of mail I get from them is junk.

I receive many checks in the mail each month, for my small business. My customers are all retail stores and they pay all their bills with paper checks.

More than twenty years in this business, and only one time, have I had a customer payment go astray or encounter serious delay. I informed a very reliable customer that I had not received payment. Customer said that she had paid on time, but promptly mailed replacement checks. A few months later, the original showed up in a battered envelope with footprints on it; the postmark verified that the customer had indeed mailed it on time.

Good Lord

We are like the only industrialized country in the world still using paper checks on a regular basis. The internet has rendered them completely obsolete, hell I don’t even think any Europeans under the age of 30 even know what a paper check is.

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
What V-Tail just said. Same exact thing happened in my town back in October. USPS removed the box from outside the Post Office. (and the interior was coated with some sort of glue like substance from the fishing attempts)

A few days later they replaced it with a new one that has a thin slot only. (no tilt-in basket)

They use rodent glue traps. They were using jacks to pry them open. People use them as trash cans. It's really annoying, my route is next to the office, so people drive around looking for me to hand me their mail.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
We are like the only industrialized country in the world still using paper checks on a regular basis. The internet has rendered them completely obsolete, hell I don’t even think any Europeans under the age of 30 even know what a paper check is.

This is extra funny to me, as I just dropped a check in the big blue mailbox -- outside the PO -- to pay for my PO box rent.
(Yes, I realize there's an option to make that payment online."

And speaking of PO box rent -- the rate's going up. Again. Like it does every term.

Here's some additional fun from the letter that came with the semiannual payment notice:
"Payments received before January 9, 2022, will be renewed at the existing PO Box rate (see renewal notice included with this letter). PO Box fees will change on January 9, 2022. Payments received on or after January 9, 2022, will be charged at the [u]new[/u] price wich is not reflected in your January payment notice."

That's right. Pay it on time, or the rate goes up to an unknown amount.

And of course -- like the cell phone and satellite TV companies -- new customers get treated better than the loyals: 13 months of service for a 12-month payment.

FedEx and UPS i dont have a problem with, USPS i know i most likely am going to get screwed,their informed delivery is just a suggestion, you're scheduled to get it Tuesday,we might get it to you Wednesday or Thursday, LOL!!..lets be realistic, you'll get it when you get it. And they wanted to feed further billions into this mess?

quote:

Originally posted by m.p.driver:
FedEx and UPS i dont have a problem with, USPS i know i most likely am going to get screwed,their informed delivery is just a suggestion, you're scheduled to get it Tuesday,we might get it to you Wednesday or Thursday, LOL!!..lets be realistic, you'll get it when you get it. And they wanted to feed further billions into this mess?

I was due 5 letters and a package today, according to (un)informed delivery. I received a letter that was due last Saturday and one that was due today. I checked the 'I did not receive this mailpiece' box as usual for the other 5 items - for what good it does. I'm still waiting for someone to resolve my missing package complaint from before Christmas.

The sooner they privatize the worthless organization the better.

The USPS has managed to lose 4 Priority Mail packages this month alone. Two were tracked to my address (but not put in my PO Box)(I presume they went in someone else’s box). The others never showed up on tracking.

I regularly get mail for someone else at my curbside box and the PO Box. It appears that their employees could give less than a shit about getting their job done right.

*sigh*

Allegedly I had a package out for delivery today. Mail truck just came and went. No package

And USPS "Informed Delivery" appears to be down for the count.

I'm fast getting to the point that if they don't ship UPS, and don't make it clear they're shipping UPS, I won't order from them anymore. I'm pretty fed up with this bullshit.

Or, better yet: Just stop buying stuff on-line entirely?

ETA: The good news is that at least they didn't claim it was delivered when it was not. (Assuming the email notifications aren't down along with the Informed Delivery web site.)