MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
I believe it would be rare for someone to receive mail at your address when they didn't put on a forwarding order and then to actually know about it. Certainly mail could be mis-delivered to your house, but how would that person know unless you contacted them somehow? I deliver mail only as addressed with a couple of exceptions. If I can see that the sender addressed it wrong (usually a wrong house #, but the correct street), I would likely deliver it to the address where the person lives. Even if someone moved in the same town but didn't put in a forwarding order, we aren't allowed to just "hand off" the mail to their new address. I did recently notice that a woman (her parents live on the route I deliver) had a piece of mail with her name on it but the address to be delivered to was in Maryland. I know the woman is now receiving mail at her parents home and likely has a forwarding order from Maryland to her parents house in NY. The letter may have been automatically re-routed to NY with the new addresses bar code put on the envelope and the letter then arrived in the computer-sorted mail for the NY address. I just delivered it knowing that the surnames matched. I hope this answers your question and thanks for writing.
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If you know their name and what PO they work at you could mail it with their name, c/o the PO where they work and hopefully they will get it. You could mark it Personal if you want to. I have lost a lot of faith lately in things getting delivered to where they should but you could try it. I would think if our supervisor or PM saw a letter addresses to an employee they'd give it to them as long as it wasn't habitual. iVe never been in that situation so I can't say for sure. Thanks for your question.
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If the mail arrives at the PO for delivery on the Saturday and the recipient's office or building is closed, we hold the mail at the PO until the following delivery day (usually Monday) and deliver it then. We will do the same thing if a business or institution is closed any other day of the week. We will hold the mail until the next delivery day that they are open. On some occasions the facility will have a door slot or mailbox. In that case we can deliver the mail anytime since there is no need for the facility/office to be open to receive mail delivery. Thanks for your inquiry.
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I am thinking it may be held up in Customs, but am not sure if that happens before or after it gets to the ISC, or is maybe based in the Miami ISC. Do you know if the recipient is still looking for their items? Sometimes it doesn't get any more bar code scans before it is delivered but actually has been delivered. You could go to www.usps.com and maybe do an inquiry as to where the items could be but I don't have a lot of confidence that you will get any more info than is what you already have.
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This definitely happens all the time. I would hope that we try to deliver every package but if we haven't organized our deliveries well enough, we may forget to deliveran online purchase. The parcel would then be brought back to the Post Office and probably be delivered the next delivery day.
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It's odd for someone to say "it's on the truck" when the tracking seems very non-specific and sounds like it hasn't been updated. 8 days is too long for a certified letter to reach you unless the item was missorted en route and was either misdelivered or is sitting at a PO and nothing is being done with it. I don't know what to tell you to do except to wait a few more days. After that, you could contact the sender and say you never received the letter though they would have the same information as the online tracking.
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I wouldn't recommend it unless you put a stamp on the envelope. The reason I say this is because the mailbox is only supposed to be used for US Mail with proper postage. That being said, if you leave the envelope in the mailbox clearly marked for the recipient company or resident with no postage it's possible the letter carrier would notice it and just leave it in the mailbox. That is what I would do but I can't speak for another letter carrier who isn't paying attention and just takes an envelope that looks like it could be outgoing mail. If you put the payment envelope in the mailbox with the address and postage it could be taken as outgoing mail but you can rest assured it will get to the recipient within a couple of days as a regular piece of mail. If possible, could you find an alternate place to put the payment or pay electronically?
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