Can you trust the US post office to forward your mail?

by Jen (October 2, 2008)

In the past I’ve been a defender of the US post office. It can’t be easy to deliver mail correctly as often as they do. What I didn’t realize is that when they are incompetent, that’s you’re problem - they don’t care.

This past May (five months ago) I moved across town from one zip code to another. I set up a forwarding order from Old Zip to New Zip and gave it to the carrier in advance of the date I wanted forwarding to start, as you have to do. Immediately, I stopped getting mail. It was getting bounced back to senders - including important checks and bills. I spent a lot of time driving to the post office and talking to a supervisor to get it straightened out. It was like they’d never seen a forwarding order before. Before my very eyes they struggled to understand what their own form meant.

I called everyone who sends me something important near the end of the month, told them the new address and warned them to expect the returned mail. Fortunately, they all took good care of me, but it was still a month before I had all my late checks and bills at the new place, because it took so long for the mail to be returned to sender.

But that’s not the worst of it. I thought everything was resolved until August, when I bought something on ebay for $18 altogether - vintage items that couldn’t be replaced. After a few weeks, I emailed the sender and asked what address she’d sent them to. She rattled off my new address without a single typo, and gave me a tracking number too. I checked the tracking number on the USPS website: it said my package had arrived on August 6th to my old zip code.

Get it? My new post office, for lack of a better term, anti-forwarded it back to my old one. Now how on earth does that happen? And now it’s gone for good. They’re certain the carrier delivered it, and can only assume the new tenants in my old apartment opened the mail and kept it. I have my doubts about that. I’m sure it can happen, but I’ve never had anyone steal my mail like that - it’s a federal offense.

I asked the post office to investigate how this happened and get back to me. I was assured I’d receive a call by the end of yesterday. I didn’t, so I’m sharing this online and you’re welcome to link to it anywhere you see fit. As far as I’m concerned, the post office misdirected my mail as good as intentionally - which, again, is a federal offense. And somewhere through all of this, I recently learned they also bounced some mail back from my bank, causing the bank to close my ATM card for fear of fraud - yet another phone call and inconvenience for me to deal with.

I’m not sure what the alternative is here. I’ve eliminated use of the post office as much as possible, more because I prefer going paperless than out of any desire not to do business with them. But now I don’t want to do business with them either. In the future, maybe if I have plenty of notice before moving I can notify everyone who sends me mail before it’s too late, and skip the whole forwarding process. All I know is, in this case, I actually experienced more loss and delay of mail because of forwarding than I think I would have from not using a forwarding order and just handling it myself.

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