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28 Sep 12 - 02:44 PM (#3411468) Subject: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: MikeL2 Hi Can your postman read ?? Recently we have been receiving mail that is not addressed to our home. In all cases the names and addresses have been clearly written and in most cases typed or printed. Several of our neighbours on the same road have received mail clearly addressed to us and brought it to us. However I want to bring to your attention a letter - very clearly addressed - to someone with a completely different name and an address not even in our town was delivered to our home. So I placed it in the mail box at our local village store to be collected and re-delivered correctly. Two days later it was delivered to us again !! So this time I wrote very clearly on the envelope that this was not for our address. Today the letter has again been delivered here. What do you think I should do next?? I am sure that some of you will have some ideas - some of you may even had similar problems ?? Cheers MikeL2 |
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28 Sep 12 - 02:53 PM (#3411472) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Becca72 I think I would take it to the post office branch in town and explain to them. I just moved into an apartment that had been vacant (renovations) for awhile before I moved in; had all my mail forwarded, put my name on the front of the mailbox. A couple of days ago I got a letter addressed to someone else (not a resident in the building) with a rather nasty note on it to put the name on the box. I left a return note stating "this person does not reside at this apartment. name IS on box" Why assume that the 1 anomaly is the norm? All my other mail has arrived without incident and this is the only piece of mail received in error... |
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28 Sep 12 - 03:14 PM (#3411479) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: gnu "completely different name and an address not even in our town" Now, THAT is odd and distressing. |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:10 PM (#3411496) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bobert There is a problem at the post office with their sorting... The delivery person ain't the problem... I'm sure the post office would love to know that this is occurring so they can fix it... Sounds like a systemic problem to me... B~ |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:16 PM (#3411498) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Q (Frank Staplin) Is the postal code correct? |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:36 PM (#3411504) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: gnu Ahhh, Bobert... if the address AND TOWN name is wrong??? |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:42 PM (#3411507) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bob the Postman Sorting and delivering mail is like typing—to do it efficiently, you have to be able to do it faster than you can think about doing it. A typist who carefully taps each individual key and confirms the result on the screen will take a lot longer than one who lets his fingers fly over the keys without looking. Press a hunt-and-peck typist to put out as many pages per hour as a touch typist and the result will be an awful lot of typographical errors. After sorting the same case day after day, a postie can sort as automatically and almost perfectly as a touch typist can type. But sorting a strange case is like typing on a non-QWERTY keyboard. Until you learn the new layout, even the best typist or sorter has to go back to hunt and peck. So you make exponentially more mistakes on an unfamiliar case or route than you do on one you already know. And depending on when and where you are, you might have to integrate machine-sorted into your sequence of hand-sorted mail, and machines have their own ways of making mistakes. But as far as the misdelivery where the name, address, and city are all wrong |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:47 PM (#3411509) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bob the Postman Curse ye, iPad keyboard, for ye have cause me to accidentally hit "Submit". As I was saying, in the case of the real head-scratchers, the mistakes that are wrong all through, the most common reason for that is letters sticking together, which happens routinely in the case of mass mailings like bills and occasionally with ordinary letters from grandma. |
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28 Sep 12 - 04:50 PM (#3411513) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bobert That's what I'm sayin', gn-ze... There is a systemic problem in the sorting that's crossed up... B~ |
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28 Sep 12 - 05:54 PM (#3411524) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: gnu There is a problem with a human who puts a letter in a mailbox that belongs at a DIFFERENT ADDRESS in a DIFFERENT TOWN. If it is addressed to 28 Gram Smoke Street, Green Patch, West Virginia, how does it end up in a mailbox at 999 Gunsmoke Avenue, Pocatello, Idaho? Put that in yer pipe and smoke it. >;-) |
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29 Sep 12 - 02:42 PM (#3411816) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: gnu Here's one for ya. I talked to a buddy who retired from Canada Post... When someone puts a letter delivered to the wrong address into a mailbox the sorting machine rejects it because the postage has been cancelled. This mail has been "delayed" and Canada Post must deliver it ASAP. In rotation, a posty gets to deliver such mail after the regular shift at overtime pay by Canada Post van. They must be payed for four hours minimum. They get to take the van home and get drive it to work next day because the postal facility is closed. And that is why my posty can't tell the difference between 55 Hopper Street and 55 Leeside Drive. The things ya learn, eh? |
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30 Sep 12 - 05:49 AM (#3412031) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: MikeL2 Hi Gnu et al <" There is a problem with a human who puts a letter in a mailbox that belongs at a DIFFERENT ADDRESS in a DIFFERENT TOWN."> That is what I was trying to say. Having worked myself as a "Christmas Postman" when I was a student I got to learn all about sorting etc etc. But when I took the mail out, as I could read I used to find the occasional mistake but Ididn't deliver them but took them back to the sorting office. And remember this isn't just happening with one letter. We have had several delivered wrongly and others that should have come to us have been brought to us by the kind recipients. The point I am making is that the mail deliverer either can't read or can't be bothered to do so. For instance, could it be that the postman is not English and does not read the language that well?? Becca I have taken the letter to the sorting office and complained about the other mis-deliveries too. They have " promised to look into it." Mind you they had one guy who seemed to deliver all his mail very quickly. After complaints from people that hadn't received mail that they expected they checked him out.........He was "delivering his mail in dust bins, and he even stuffed loads of letters down a drain!!! We will see eh? Cheers MikeL2 |
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30 Sep 12 - 08:47 AM (#3412088) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bonzo3legs We have one delivery per day - if we are lucky by 2pm. |
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30 Sep 12 - 09:47 AM (#3412102) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: MikeL2 Hi Bonzo <" We have one delivery per day - if we are lucky by 2pm. "> Hey you must live near us !!! We are the same - one delivery per day always after 12.30pm. But sometimes they actually bring us mail that belongs to us!!! And for some unknown reason we never seem to get any mail at all on a Tuesday !!! ?? Cheers MikeL2 |
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01 Oct 12 - 04:12 AM (#3412431) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Roger the Skiffler I know what "going postal" means but I have always wondered why? Are US posties more prone to going carzy & shooting colleagues than other workers? If so what does it say about recruitment, training and workload/stress problems? UK posties are on the whole friendly & efficient despite increasing workloads. When I worked on the post as a student(1960s) I was impressed by the pride they took in solving badly addressed mail. Occasionally we get one who has a bedroom full of unposted mail because the workload gets on top of them but I don't think one has ever shot colleagues. RtS |
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01 Oct 12 - 05:45 AM (#3412448) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Sandra in Sydney we get some interesting letters in our building & I found a solution about 10 years ago when we received a letter addressed to someone with the same apartment & street numbers, a completely different street (our street has 2 words in it's name!), suburb & an unrelated postcode! Our postcodes are 4-digit numbers starting with 20. So I wrote on it 'Not apt/st number, our street name & suburb - PLEASE DELIVER AS ADDRESSED' & it didn't return. Nor did others readdressed that way. I still dunno why the posties who work in our area do the same thing again & again over the years. Another time I received a letter in my PO Box addressed to a company with the same PO Box number in Britain! British postcodes are 3 letters & 3 numbers (if I remember correctly) & the suburb name was nothing like ours, either. So I handed it to the man in charge of the Post Office & it returned to my box again the next day. Same happened again & I found out the new letter sorter was disabled, so when I received it the 4 time, I wrote INSUFFICIENTLY ADDRESSED - RTS & I didn't get it back. I assume the junior in that office used local stamps on all mail without looking. The other ting I don't understand is why so many of my immediate neighbours won't take mail into the next building when it is delivered to ours. sandra |
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01 Oct 12 - 11:00 AM (#3412560) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Bob the Postman **They get to take the van home and get drive it to work next day because the postal facility is closed.** Best thing is to get this OT gig on Friday. Then you can use the van on Saturday to take the empties back to the grog shop. And on Sunday after church you can take the kids to the lake. Another great PO perk is the annual Christmas Booze and Drug Allowance cheque, or "turkey money" as it is euphemistically called. |
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01 Oct 12 - 07:00 PM (#3412739) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: GUEST,999 In a contest that US Post has every year, a winner many years back was Wood John Mass It would have been correctly delivered had it been a real letter.. |
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02 Oct 12 - 01:07 AM (#3412875) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: JohnInKansas Some years ago a friend vacationing in Africa sent me a postcard. That it had a picture of a "nearly nude" young lady on the front was possibly just incidental; but it did take a little over seven months to arrive in my mailbox, complete with thumbtack holes in the four corners indicating it had been posted on someone's bulletin board for a time, and a small piece of pickle stuck over part of the return address, suggesting that it was "sorted" while someone ate lunch. While we were moving, we filed a temporary forwarding address to have our mail sent to my son's box. Three years later, having filed a corrected forwarding address to have ours all sent to our new address, we still receive about as much of my son's mail as he does. (His mailbox is on the opposite side of the street, about 48 feet from ours.) Since we moved into the new home we've been receiving a magazine addressed to a person who may have been a friend of the former occupant. After about three consecutive issues were put back in our box with notation "THIS PERSON IS NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" the magazine "corrected" their mailings, and for almost another two years now we've continued to receive the same magazine now ADDRESSED TO US. As the magazine is trash of no interest to us, we certainly won't renew the subscription, although it was apparently prepaid for several (unknown how many) years. We hope it will expire soon, as our recyle cart is usually overfilled with it and the other junk mail. John |
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02 Oct 12 - 02:52 AM (#3412889) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: GUEST,Eliza Here in rural Norfolk UK we get one delivery a day, usually around 2pm. But our postman is a star. He knows everyone's names in the village and will even hide small parcels if they won't go through the letterbox. If an incorrect letter appeared, he'd ring the bell to ask if we had a visitor staying with us! Anything like that he'd definitely put back in his van and take to the depot. We love him and always give him his 'Christmas Box' with great pleasure. |
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02 Oct 12 - 09:35 AM (#3413016) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Sandra in Sydney lucky Eliza! he's definitely a treasure. sandra |
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03 Oct 12 - 12:09 AM (#3413418) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Jim Dixon MikeL2: You didn't way what country you're in, but if this were the US, I'd bet the problem is with the barcode. Nowadays, the USPS uses machines that read the address and print a barcode within a half inch of the bottom edge of the envelope. Once a barcode is printed on the envelope, all subsequent sorting will be done according to the barcode, and the printed address will be ignored. Once in a while the machine misfeeds and sends two envelopes through at once, one overlapping the other. Then the machine might read the address off the top envelope and print the barcode on the bottom one, as if it were the same envelope. Some kinds of mail arrive at the post office with a barcode already printed on it. Those envelopes will bypass the OCR/barcoder and be sorted according to the existing barcode. So if your mystery envelope has an incorrect barcode, for whatever reason, it will keep coming back to you as long as that barcode remains unchanged. To make sure it doesn't come back again, you must make the existing barcode illegible. I don't know whether other countries use the same procedures or equipment. |
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03 Oct 12 - 12:57 AM (#3413428) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Joe Offer I'm in rural Northern California, and I frequently get mail addressed to the Catholic church that is six miles away. I finally figured out why I consistently get missent mail only for the church. My address is 58 Lulu Lane (or something like that), and the church is at 58 Oak Street. All I can figure is that the post office is sorting by the address number, not by street name. -Joe- |
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03 Oct 12 - 03:21 PM (#3413798) Subject: RE: BS: Hey Mr Postman From: Dave MacKenzie Jim, in the UK, Royal Mail uses a similar system, so once the IMPs (Terry Pratchett did his homework) have processed a letter once, it is highly likely that it will be missorted again, unless the faint red barcode along the bottom right hand corner is cancelled. |