USPS: "We can't" culture at its finest. How to restore mail service?

[eljefino]

Around here if you suffer a mid-winter mailbox failure, they let you stick a post in a 5 gallon bucket, or put a mailbox on a saw-horse. These are both portable/ luggable so you can bring them in if snow's in the forecast. They may be technically non-compliant but our mail carriers are decent, albeit overworked people and make the effort most of the time.

Sometimes they're running late and have to lie to the scanner about why they're running late. "Running late" isn't a button so they use the "inaccessible" one. These guys work 60+ hours a week because they can't hire enough people so I cut them a little slack. Get my stuff the next day.

 

[Pablo]

$5 per every 15 minutes risking instant death on county roads in all conditions day and dark?

Sign me up!

 

[GON]

USPS needs more employees like Newman (Norman):

 

[fdcg27]

Never a problem with USPS. Always get our delivery. If we have our mail held because we're going to be away, they always deliver it on the date asked.
USPS is also the cheapest option for packages and the ones we send out for the holidays arrive within a couple of days using their lowest rate option.
Maybe USPS should take over UPS and Fedex?

 

[Al]

Carrying around paper letters 90% of which are advertisements and don't pay their way is like walking with dinosaurs. Atual letters need to be priced higher and so do spam stuff.

 

[GON]

Never a problem with USPS. Always get our delivery. If we have our mail held because we're going to be away, they always deliver it on the date asked.
USPS is also the cheapest option for packages and the ones we send out for the holidays arrive within a couple of days using their lowest rate option.
Maybe USPS should take over UPS and Fedex?

USPS service appears very location dependent. We lived in a town of 200 in Pennsylvania for four years, the USPS service was world class. Same outstanding USPS service in Utah. in Washington state, USPS was like dealing with a North Korean bureaucracy. In Arizona nice people at USPS, but they struggled at the most easiest of issues. In New Mexico, outstanding service.

Guess it is like most things, service received more often than not comes down to organizational leadership and culture. And of course the person in the front line providing a service can also make a significant difference.

 

[Pew]

When there is no one to hire, you need to lower your standards, or not hire anyone

While you can make a decent wage if you stay long enough, it appears the bottom 25%, which I assume is starting wage - is between $19 and $21 an hour. Hard to support a family on $40K a year, so your going to get what you get.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes435052.htm

An old manager of mine went to go work for USPS. From what he said (and much like UPS) you start at the bottom and you might get a route once or twice a week if somebody calls off or retires. That could go on for a year, or three.

No person with self-respect is going to sit around and wait to see if they might get a route for the day. People have bills to pay and they ostracize a huge amount of the work pool who can work, but only if somebody calls off for the day.

 

[cptbarkey]

You cant shovel it safely. You will get hit by a car. It is a 55MPH road. and Everyone does 65+.

Move your mailbox, like in your driveway. Give them space to turnaround. Draw a diagram proposal and show it to them. Enough complaining about postal workers and help them instead.

 

[NormanBuntz]

I live north of Harrisburg PA, had less than 2 inches of snow Last week. Have not received mail for the last week, waiting on prescriptions (heart and asthma) and such. Per the tracking it says can not be delivered due to hazardous weather conditions. Yeah Right!! Sun shine past 5 days, UPS FedEx Amazon all make it up the road, Heck even the pizza delivery boy in is Honda Civic has been up delivering to neighbors.

Neighbors went to local PO and asked for their mail. They were told to come back next day to pick up—they did go back to find out that is was out for delivery—Never delivered!!

We all filed complaints on USPS website to no avail as can not call the number for the PO since it’s a generic USPS 800 number. The local number that was found is never answered, it just times out. We did get acknowledgements via email that USPS has received the “concerns” and will get back to us.

I gather they will respond after mail is delivered and give a canned apology.

44 years here and never had an issue--welcome to the new millennium!

When you go in and ask to speak to Postmaster they claim that he/she is not there , you then ask for a supervisor and they get a blank deer eye look on their faces and claim that he didn't show up today.

Unless yours is a very small post office, either the Postmaster, Officer in Charge or a delivery supervisor will always be working. The window clerk lied to you.

 

[NormanBuntz]

I am finding the whole "I can't" "we can't" culture that has notched up since the big C extremely frustrating. I have lived at my property for 11 years now and have never had a legit disruption in mail delivery. The state plow has broken my mailbox post twice. I always rebuilt it from scratch, to the letter, to the specs provided from our municipality. They have taken the state regulations and township regulations and put it in an easy to read homeowner drawing so that you can get your mailbox perfect to their requirments.

Each year that has gone by, the snow level and mound height has always been the same, it builds up, it melts down, it has always required the mailman to use a device out their window to reach all of the mailboxes due to the state highway and the snow loads. I have never in the past had issues getting mail delivered, and to be quite frank they actually delivered mail to my broken mailbox when it was a few inches from the ground. What has changed now other than terrible employees?

I have not been getting any mail since shortly after Christmas. They are unable to deliver as a result of too much snow, making it unsafe for their drivers. They recommended me to get an app / sign up on their website and I can have my mail held at my request. They will not restore service until the state gets the snow mounds reduced. I called our local penndot and they have never heard of this and said they do not control the snow buildup on the side of the roads and re-iterated that nothing has changed on their end.


Any suggestions?

Go to the main Erie post office and ask to meet with a Customer Service representative. If that fails, go to the Delivery Services office. I know. USPS Customer Service is an oxymoron.

 

[johnnydc]

When there is no one to hire, you need to lower your standards, or not hire anyone

While you can make a decent wage if you stay long enough, it appears the bottom 25%, which I assume is starting wage - is between $19 and $21 an hour. Hard to support a family on $40K a year, so your going to get what you get.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/2022/may/oes435052.htm

That is also a problem, But the lowering of standards have been going on for many years.

 

[eljefino]

An old manager of mine went to go work for USPS. From what he said (and much like UPS) you start at the bottom and you might get a route once or twice a week if somebody calls off or retires. That could go on for a year, or three.

No person with self-respect is going to sit around and wait to see if they might get a route for the day. People have bills to pay and they ostracize a huge amount of the work pool who can work, but only if somebody calls off for the day.

The exact opposite is going on now, you get 60+ hours per week for two years with zero days off. All the work you want, and then some.

 

[eljefino]

Carrying around paper letters 90% of which are advertisements and don't pay their way is like walking with dinosaurs. Atual letters need to be priced higher and so do spam stuff.

https://stateimpact.npr.org/new-ham...ail-is-helping-to-prop-up-the-postal-service/

 

[D60]

The usps does not use taxpayer money! Google it.

This is what bothered me about the arbitrary (I'm sorry, but it was arbitrary) shut down Jan 8

USPS loves to declare they don't get our taxpayer dollars but they can be forced to shut down at Congressional decree? Apparently.

If they were truly operating like a for-profit business they'd keep delivering like the true private carriers did on Jan 8.

The whole idea of USPS initially was health of interstate commerce. Hard to conduct business when you take a day off because a former president died.

I mean no disrespect to Carter but I'd be rolling over in my grave if anyone shut down the country because I died. Makes no sense.

 

[D60]

In rural areas this is where the private carriers have an edge because they can be more flexible.

I have the cell numbers of both my FedEx and UPS drivers. If there's heavy snow I'll communicate with them and meet them some place easy for them.

Point being USPS is too slow, too lumbering, too inflexible and unable to adapt. It's just a VERY low speed train wreck and eventually they'll have to shut down or DRASTICALLY restructure. It happens .0000000000001% every few months so we don't really see it.

The employees TODAY don't care because they'll be on their death beds just as USPS is going full belly-up

 

[Pablo]

In rural areas this is where the private carriers have an edge because they can be more flexible.

I have the cell numbers of both my FedEx and UPS drivers. If there's heavy snow I'll communicate with them and meet them some place easy for them.

Point being USPS is too slow, too lumbering, too inflexible and unable to adapt. It's just a VERY low speed train wreck and eventually they'll have to shut down or DRASTICALLY restructure. It happens .0000000000001% every few months so we don't really see it.

The employees TODAY don't care because they'll be on their death beds just as USPS is going full belly-up

I loved 2016-2020 all the blow hards blaming dude in WH for USPS. Then silence 2020-2024. Hahahaa

 

[Mainia]

The usps does not use taxpayer money! Google it.

Yeah, but we sure THEN get some pretty UN-impressive taxpayer paid healthcare employees on REGULAR basis.

 

[The motor guy]

I've lived in my home for 20+ years. Until about a year ago my mail service was/is horrific. Delivery person(s) will outright life and claim a parcel in "undeliverable" or obstruction to delivery. THe physical location is as lively as a morgue and slow as molasses. Then the middle aged workers began to be replaced with millennials and a few Z's. The difference has been night and day! Actual smiles and hello's and delivery is rather consistent now.

Sounds like you should be speaking to the Postmaster and maybe providing images of your delivery site. Good luck.

We have have a new person here. They frequently just bring the packages back to the post office because they don't know where to drop them off. Good thing I don't have a real job otherwise I'd have to take time off just to pickup a package

 

[Pablo]

Looks like some winning from USPS. Been writing to a black hole about this for years!

End the subsidies make it a revenue stream for inbound packages from China

 

[supton]

Move your mailbox, like in your driveway. Give them space to turnaround. Draw a diagram proposal and show it to them. Enough complaining about postal workers and help them instead.

I think there's something against that... I recall years ago my grandparents had an uphill battle to get that done, elderly and disabled, and I want to say it was not trivial to pull off. Maybe things have changed since then. Or maybe the small town gave up and gave in.

I do have to echo Astro's question, why not just get a PO box. Annoying to run to town but if the road is just that unsafe, then ditch the box. One less thing to deal with in winter (digging out the mailbox). Been a while since I had a box but I recall the hours being more generous than for the desk.