Winston Lawrence

Project Manager & Occasional developer

You had one job!

you-have-one-job-usps

Every now and then, particularly if you use Reddit, you will run across the "You had one job" fails" meme.

The image above shows the tracking status as of the 12/21 date of this article for a certified letter with return receipt requested that should have been delivered by 12/14 and for even normal no additional fee first-class mail, long before 12/21 which was the final date that the recipient would accept the enclosed contract.

Of course after two visits to the local post-office where the letter was mailed and despite providing my name, street address. phone number and email address both in person and online and both promising to get back to me (which has not happened yet), this certified letter and return receipt is still MIA as far as the post office is concerned.

Luckily for me the letter WAS received (only two days late instead of 9), so that was good for me, but as far as the United States Postal Service (USPS) is concerned the letter is still MIA and and a mystery yet to be resolved.

This was not the only mishap this week as I was on the receiving end of a letter that was mailed to me as next day delivery for 12/13 that I did not receive until 12/18. Again no explanation and I did inform the sender that they should request a refund from the post office for failure to provide the service that was paid for and that is the whole point of this article.

USPS you have one job to do and it's not getting done.

I started using electronic bill pay years ago because I hate buying stamps and then having my own bill payments not delivered on time. I also gave up my PO Box for a UPS box which costs more money but UPS does not stuff my mail box so full of junk mail that I can't get my regular mail. The post office response to the overflowing mail box and my reason for immediately giving it up was that they were required to deliver the mail to the box - ignoring the fact that for me to have a box I had to be living in the area and so was already getting that junk mail delivered to my door for "free" - paying for that second delivery was something that I did NOT appreciate paying for and filling up my PO Box with junk mail as well was either inconsiderate or incompetent. The USPS just does not seem to get the concept of customer satisfaction or service.

I am not sure how long the Post Office will stay in business if they are no longer propped up by Amazon using them. I had three mail deliveries on the same day two days ago the first one was before 7:30am and the last one was around 7:30pm with the "normal" mail delivery coming in at around 2pm. The "extra" deliveries were Amazon packages - apparently Amazon must be leasing out the Post Office trucks or paying serious overtime to mail people or both.

So, we now have UPS, Fedex and Amazon fulfillment - is the USPS even in the game anymore?

Winston Lawrence

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