Postal Service ridiculously substandard one can go Postal
Isabel P. Ball
December 10, 2005
I must confess that the last mail I sent through the post office in National City in South Bay California, on Wednesday, left me so much paranoid. Not even a postal worker’s suggestion that I buy a tracker service for 45 cents, and other security services with individual price tags allayed, my skepticism, because of some past failings I had with them. But behind all the security services being offered to customers, interpretively, is a subtle message that the postal service can no longer give a reliable service of delivering mails, regardless of the service level procured. If that is the case, unwittingly, mails sent without the added security, now have a much higher probability of a hit and miss delivery, in short, the service has gone darn unreliable, and if my experiences are to be a gauge, an across the board decline in service is imminent.
When the prohibitive cost of mail has limited customers to avail of the array of delivery services, the US Postal Service (USPS) letter size mail deliveries remain uncompetitive, and cheaper than the alternative (in literal sense), to giants like FedEX, UPS, and DHL.
Because I have to penny-pinch, I ended up sending my mail, a birthday gift, which made me psychologically uptight. It had cost me $3.85 that came with a free box (though cost embedded in the price). I had thought it very much vexing and a pathetic form of public pandering by the Post Office to induce customers to buy additional services that amounts to nothing, but unexpected headache and infuriating experience, clearly as I had before.
I recall three incidences in the span of few years where the Post Office had failed to deliver my letters sent via registered, certified mail, including a very much-delayed delivery of a mail I sent through the two-day delivery. Meantime, some of my regular postage mails have also failed to reach the addressees.
Befittingly, I had filed complaints, two were rectified, and another simply got lost in obsolescence as my valuable personal time took precedence. It simply got too tiring for me to pursue the case, even with an accommodating manager, when involving more than one trip to the station to resolve the case. Neither the aggrandizing phone or internet service provide the relieving assistance. Are they being offered more as a perfunctory service than originally intended? I tend to believe it is.
Because of the advancements such as emails, my use of the postal service has greatly diminished. However, in some legal sense, the postal service remains the much-preferred means of secured delivery, but that too has deviated from reality. I want to think I’m being singled out for being the cacophonous complainer. But complaints are what improve the service. That much I know, and therefore, fielding complaints, I feel, I’m exercising that right and establishing a legacy for the common good, aside from being an admittedly, short-fused, when it comes to inefficiency, and what in the face of advancements in technology!
In September, I mailed two letters of some legal nature. Since, it is of a very pressing matter, I took the time to inquire which best service to use to insure an unfailing delivery of the letters right into the hands of the addressee. Because my addressee is an itinerant type of businessperson, I mailed two letters for drop at two locations I have known to be her addresses.
So she would receive it without fail, include a restricted delivery service,” prodded the manager emphatically. “The post office has a database that we could forward the mail at whatever address she is at,” he added comforting and assuring. I was more than happy to have followed his advice and that said strongly to the importance of the letter. A website was given to me to track down the letters. My postal fee totaled $7.92 certified mail, including a restrictive delivery service.
At the closest address in California, the letter was reportedly unclaimed by the addressee. Meanwhile, from Florida, the other mail returned to me, after several weeks of unclaimed notices. That was when I went to the Post Office to complain. No satisfactory answer was offered, and everyone seemed evasive, but appeasing. The most insulting thing done was to have me call the station in Riverside to follow up, which I did unsuccessfully, since no one took the call. As it appeared, the overzealous manager had given me a wrong advice to utilize the restrictive delivery. And one puzzling note, he wasn’t at the station to face with me responsibly. It was enough to make me go ballistic.
Intent to get a closure on the matter, a female manager was more accommodating, sensible, and efficient. She, at length explained that my addressee might not have left a forwarding address. This turned out to be contentious, because indirectly, my addressee, after the incidence, insinuated that her family receives her mail. I’d like to think that her mails are being forwarded to her, and that the Post Office should have that address, and should have done the forwarding. After one or two attempts, the manager finally contacted the station in Riverside, and immediately it was established that the station had lost the mail in the maze or something. So, in an appeasing move, she offered to refund me the postal fee. I was grumbling and truly unhappy, as I signed the document in November.
Truly mind-boggling, like a dead coming back to life, the lost letter appeared in our mailbox, intact. I could only shake my head in disbelief, and pity that the Postal Service has seemingly lost control.
At the station, on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but have a condescending glance at the personnel, like robots, continuing to serve the public, but though lacking the zeal to deliver good public service. That lost of morale is intoned by a female employee at the counter to my banter expressing chagrin at the unobserved posted work hours. Resignedly, she remarked, “I’ve called my manager’s attention to that, but he is nonchalant.”
When the prohibitive cost of mail has limited customers to avail of the array of delivery services, the US Postal Service (USPS) letter size mail deliveries remain uncompetitive, and cheaper than the alternative (in literal sense), to giants like FedEX, UPS, and DHL.
Because I have to penny-pinch, I ended up sending my mail, a birthday gift, which made me psychologically uptight. It had cost me $3.85 that came with a free box (though cost embedded in the price). I had thought it very much vexing and a pathetic form of public pandering by the Post Office to induce customers to buy additional services that amounts to nothing, but unexpected headache and infuriating experience, clearly as I had before.
I recall three incidences in the span of few years where the Post Office had failed to deliver my letters sent via registered, certified mail, including a very much-delayed delivery of a mail I sent through the two-day delivery. Meantime, some of my regular postage mails have also failed to reach the addressees.
Befittingly, I had filed complaints, two were rectified, and another simply got lost in obsolescence as my valuable personal time took precedence. It simply got too tiring for me to pursue the case, even with an accommodating manager, when involving more than one trip to the station to resolve the case. Neither the aggrandizing phone or internet service provide the relieving assistance. Are they being offered more as a perfunctory service than originally intended? I tend to believe it is.
Because of the advancements such as emails, my use of the postal service has greatly diminished. However, in some legal sense, the postal service remains the much-preferred means of secured delivery, but that too has deviated from reality. I want to think I’m being singled out for being the cacophonous complainer. But complaints are what improve the service. That much I know, and therefore, fielding complaints, I feel, I’m exercising that right and establishing a legacy for the common good, aside from being an admittedly, short-fused, when it comes to inefficiency, and what in the face of advancements in technology!
In September, I mailed two letters of some legal nature. Since, it is of a very pressing matter, I took the time to inquire which best service to use to insure an unfailing delivery of the letters right into the hands of the addressee. Because my addressee is an itinerant type of businessperson, I mailed two letters for drop at two locations I have known to be her addresses.
So she would receive it without fail, include a restricted delivery service,” prodded the manager emphatically. “The post office has a database that we could forward the mail at whatever address she is at,” he added comforting and assuring. I was more than happy to have followed his advice and that said strongly to the importance of the letter. A website was given to me to track down the letters. My postal fee totaled $7.92 certified mail, including a restrictive delivery service.
At the closest address in California, the letter was reportedly unclaimed by the addressee. Meanwhile, from Florida, the other mail returned to me, after several weeks of unclaimed notices. That was when I went to the Post Office to complain. No satisfactory answer was offered, and everyone seemed evasive, but appeasing. The most insulting thing done was to have me call the station in Riverside to follow up, which I did unsuccessfully, since no one took the call. As it appeared, the overzealous manager had given me a wrong advice to utilize the restrictive delivery. And one puzzling note, he wasn’t at the station to face with me responsibly. It was enough to make me go ballistic.
Intent to get a closure on the matter, a female manager was more accommodating, sensible, and efficient. She, at length explained that my addressee might not have left a forwarding address. This turned out to be contentious, because indirectly, my addressee, after the incidence, insinuated that her family receives her mail. I’d like to think that her mails are being forwarded to her, and that the Post Office should have that address, and should have done the forwarding. After one or two attempts, the manager finally contacted the station in Riverside, and immediately it was established that the station had lost the mail in the maze or something. So, in an appeasing move, she offered to refund me the postal fee. I was grumbling and truly unhappy, as I signed the document in November.
Truly mind-boggling, like a dead coming back to life, the lost letter appeared in our mailbox, intact. I could only shake my head in disbelief, and pity that the Postal Service has seemingly lost control.
At the station, on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but have a condescending glance at the personnel, like robots, continuing to serve the public, but though lacking the zeal to deliver good public service. That lost of morale is intoned by a female employee at the counter to my banter expressing chagrin at the unobserved posted work hours. Resignedly, she remarked, “I’ve called my manager’s attention to that, but he is nonchalant.”
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