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.
Jessica, I don't know what is legal or not about returning mail to the sender if not addressed properly but it seems that your letter carrier is taking this a bit too far by returning letters that don't match exactly the name on the mailbox. As long as the apartment # is correct and the name matches somewhat the mail should be delivered. I don't know if you want to leave a note saying "please deliver all mail that is addressed to my apartment # even if the name doesn't match exactly." As far as I know names don't need to match at all as long as there is an apt # and the recipient isn't rejecting the mail as "no longer lives here or person doesn't live here". Many carriers, especially substitute or CCA (city carrier assistants), just deliver the mail as addressed which is fine. I am a very detail-oriented letter carrier and always want to make the proper deliveries but would never return something for a spelling error. I would return something sometimes if it is consistently mailed to an incorrect address. Again, the address is the most important piece of information on a piece of mail, not necessarily the name.
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I only wish I had the problem of being asked out on dates! Just kidding, and I don't mean to make light of your question. You shouldn't have to feel uncomfortable when the letter carrier comes into your office. They shouldn't be flirting with you or asking you out on dates unless it somehow seems that the feeling would be mutual. It's not a bad idea to make it clear that you aren't interested in going out with him. I know that is easier said than done. You could call the delivery supervisor or postmaster to report this but I have a feeling that might make things worse. His behavior seems quite unprofessional. I don't think it's forbidden to ask a customer to go out socially, but they shouldn't push the issue or make the customer feel awkward if they aren't interested. To answer your question about locating your home address, we don't have access to any better resources than one would have doing an Internet search. If he ever showed up at your house unexpectedly, I think I'd alert law enforcement that you may have a stalker and to let them know where he knows you from. Maybe they could tell this letter carrier to knock off that inappropriate behavior. Furthermore, we shouldn't be using information we see on mail to get information for our personal use. That is also unethical and may violate some privacy regulations. I wish you well and that the creepiness will cease.
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I don't think the letter carrier (postman) should be commenting at all to anyone who gets mail in your box. Not that it matters, but it seems quite normal to have a bill sent to another address. Maybe you pay his XFinity bill for him. Either way that doesn't matter with regards to your question. If this comes up again, I would politely tell the manager that it's not his business who receives mail at your address. If you happen to see the letter carrier, you could mention that he shouldn't be giving out that information and as long as you, the tenant, are accepting mail for your son (or whomever) then it should be delivered accordingly by the USPS employee. I am not familiar with any circumstances that allows us to verbally confirm who gets mail at an address.
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I am not familiar with any rules that would or wouldn't allow this. On the surface it seems odd that you wouldn't be able to receive your mail directly from the USPS, but this may be the way the condo is set up. When you say an owner operates a rental business in her unit, do you mean she arranges for people to rent other condo units short-term, kind of like a rental agent? Either way, I'm not sure how this affects mail delivery. An alternative to having your mail delivered to this single unit would be to rent a PO Box. Sure it is more costly than just getting your mail delivered to the condo complex, but there is reliability and privacy/security with a PO Box.
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Maybe for a day or so to see if anybody in the PO knows where that address is. Being that I deliver mail to the same neighborhood each day I know if a piece of mail has a valid address on it or not. It's possible if there is a replacement letter carrier delivering mail on a certain day and they can't find an address they will bring back the mail and then possibly the regular letter carrier on the route or somebody else would know where the address is. More often than not when mail has an address that can't be found (or the address doesn't even exist), we will endorse the mail as "NSN" which means "No Such Number" and it will be returned to the sender. The USPS has a national database of all valid addresses so we usually know at the PO if an address exists or not.
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You don't need to explain to any USPS employee why you are returning the mail. It is none of our business. As long as it is an unopened, first-class letter, you should be able to just write "refused" on it and have it returned. Personally I would just discard any unwanted mail. I've received debt collection letters in the past and have just ignored them and not returned them. There are certain classes of mail where we won't return to the sender because the sender has paid a pre-sorted standard rate (which is lower than the first-class rate). In that case, we just recycle any unwanted mail.
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I don't believe they can ask you what is actually in the large letter, but I know if it's over a certain weight or size, they can ask something to the effect of "is the item you are mailing liquid, fragile, perishable, or potentially hazardous?" and you self-certify the answer with a yes or no. Certain batteries have to go by surface only and can't fly on airplanes. So I would take exception of they actually ask you what is being mailed if it's first class or Priority Mail. If you are mailing something via Medial Mail they can verify or even open a package to inspect that it is media (books, CDs, cassettes, video, DVD). I hope this answers your question.
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