Last May I learned that a $25,000 IRS check headed to me, for my friend’s estate, got deposited illegally into a credit union branch in the city.
To hit the high points, the postal inspector – go to video – learned who took the check. Instead of prosecuting the thief, well, they just fired him. (Don’t worry, he continued to be involved with mail thefts.)
City police gave me a ‘facsimile’ of a report, county police (the crime occurred in Oakville) determined no crime in their area had occurred and the postal inspector stopped returning my calls.
End result? The thief knows who I am and where I live – as do his friends and cohorts still working for USPS. I don’t know them or have any recourse.
Since then, thanks the United States Postal Service “informed delivery” emails, I know that around 30% of the First-Class mail headed to me never arrives. Poof! Credit card bills and brokerage statements (especially those in oversized envelopes) seem especially prone to disappearing.
That’s not the worst.
A Priority Mail flat rate envelope sized to hold a #10 business envelope costs $10.10 to mail. As a supervisor at the St. Charles Post Office informed me, however, there is “no guarantee” that any piece of mail will get delivered.
For example, earlier this year it took a month for a piece mailed from St. Charles to Columbus, Ohio, with a cute green Return Postcard, to make a trip the USPS receipt said ought to take four days.
Last month, on March 25th, I mailed another $10.10 prayer to Columbus. As of today, it is still “In Transit,” the same message I received when I typed in the tracking number on March 29th, the expected delivery date.
This packet included a lot of confidential stuff. My mom gets hospice care for dementia at an assisted living facility. Medicare covers the nurse, CNA and social worker visiting my mom multiple times a week. The facility cost is on her, as it has been since she entered the place over two years ago. While mom gets a decent pension, scheduled 401 (k) payments and Social Security, well, it still takes a few thousand a month more to pay her bill and keep her house in one big piece. The people with her investment money keep a closet full of ridiculous forms to wall off that money.
Just four months after the St. Charles Probate Court issued a direct order to the investment people to give the family access to the funds they did…just one more thing: my brother and I had to send a sheet with a voided check from my mom’s active account, all our Social Security numbers and addresses and signatures from my brother and me. That’s what is missing this time.
After hearing the “no guarantee” speech I decided that in light of their record with my mail, I had reasonable cause to suspect this outgoing envelope had been stolen or purposely destroyed. So, I called the national number for the postal inspectors as given to me by the “no guarantee” speaker. That got me a call center where what I needed wasn’t one of the options. After several calls I got to a person – who told me I called the wrong number. He told me I had to call Customer Service.
Guess what?
Time for Plan Q… I wrote up my experiences and noted why I was displeased in a two-page letter to Medora Walker, the Postmaster for this region. Then I drove to the Main Post Office to deliver it in person.
- The only employees on the first floor didn’t know where the postmaster’s office, room 3035, was located or how to get there.
- They sent me to the Security cage to the guy wearing a bright yellow rain slicker indoors on a 80” day.
- The postmaster is in a “restricted area” and “you can’t go there.”
- The postmaster does not meet people or take phone calls, she only accepts communications mailed to her.
So, to get a letter sized envelope from the main level of the post office to the wonderful wizard’s inner sanctum costs – with tracking — $10.10.
She should get it three business days after mailing.
Obviously, the word “service” needs to be deleted from the Post Office’s legal title. No accountability, no guarantees, equals no service.
Want to take bets on if this letter ever gets delivered?
Glenn Koenen
Header image created with Microsoft CoPilot.