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's allowed for a letter carrier to take home the mail vehicle to your own residence as long as it's within a reasonable distance of where you deliver the mail, I delivered mail to a letter carrier's home who delivered mail on a nearby route. He'd bring his vehicle home daily (I could set my watch by him) and eat lunch. Our normal lunch break is 30 minutes and that includes the time it takes to get to and from your postal route. If the carrier was there for more than 30 minutes, that may not be appropriate but I can't really speak for anything that I don't personally know since the rules are so often enforced arbitrarily.
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Lara, today I had a similar situation today with one of the customers I deliver to. They showed me their USPS Infromed Delivery email and an item shown wasn't in their actual mail. It was a specific letter they were waiting for. I don't know what to do if the letter doesn't show up. Your question seems to also ask about not getting any delivery whatsoever on Saturday. That shouldn't happen. We deliver on Mon-Sat excluding national holidays. I know some offices are having a staff shortage, but that's not a great explanation. I have little faith In the quality of work done by some coworkers and supervisors. Many have an "I don't care" attitude. This is nothing new but seemingly more prevalent lately.
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I can't say why your letter carrier does what you are mentioning. It's unfortunate that you have an issue with her. By saying that she is still delivering mail, I assume you mean that she still is working for the USPS as a letter carrier but not physically delivering mail to your residence because your mail is being forwarded to a PO Box. A vacant card is appropriate to be put in your mailbox so that anybody who is delivering mail on a route that includes your address would know not to leave any mail in it. It's also unfortunate that you have to now go to a PO Box to retrieve your mail plus pay a rental fee. Is it possible that the letter carrier is checking the mailbox to make sure no mail has been accidentally left there by someone else? I doubt that is the case because it seems like you and her were in a conflict and that she probably isn't going out of her way to help you. While I'm only hearing one side of this conflict (yours), I can certainly say there are some bad workers for the USPS and nothing would surprise me about the actions of some letter carriers.
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I can answer your question in two parts. The first question you have is about whether or not mail can be forwarded to an address out of state even if the person isn't living in a residence in that state. Mail can be forwarded anywhere that the USPS delivers to as long as there is a proper change of addresss authorization/request submitted to the USPS. The easiest way to do this is at USPS.com .
As far as affecting and medical benefits and tax issues, I'm not qualified to give you an official answer. It probably depends on the source of the medical benefits. Some state public health assistance programs like Medicaid may require the recipient to live in that state. It doesn't necessarily mean their mail can't go somewhere else. I don't know about tax issues either. It shouldn't matter when filing a federal tax return, but I'm not sure about different state tax laws. There are probably 50 different answers to that.
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In my opinion you can ask a letter carrier anything you want but you may get a whole variety of replies that run the gamut from helpful to not being interested. I don't know any rules on what they can and can't help you with but the letter carrier should always protect the confidentiality of the customer and any mail they receive. That is pretty sacred. To give you a personal answer, nobody has ever approached me about getting leads about anything except maybe real estate agents. To be fair, I wouldn't be interested in helping anybody get potential leads for anything. I feel it is entirely unprofessional to do. A real estate agent may say to me I'll give you a referral commission if I know of anybody selling their house. I may accept their business card but not do anything else. To sum up, I don't know what you can and can't ask a letter carrier, but I feel it's unprofessional and possibly unethical to assist salespeople working in the area.
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As much as I hate hearing stories like this I know it all too much to be true. We have many employees who don't care about delivering mail properly or accurately or have an attitude. Unfortunately I don't know how effective complaining about a letter carrier is. Our management often is indifferent or powerless to effect major changes in someone's work ethic. I know this sounds damning of many co-workers but I just get that feeling at times. I don't mean to sidestep your question but wanted to explain that none of this surprises me. I'd start by contacting your local post office and ask to speak with a delivery supervisor or manager. Tell them your story but don't exaggerate it. If your service continues to be poor or you don't think you're getting mail that you're supposed to or that items you mailed aren't getting to their destination, I suppose the next step would be to contact the USPS Consumer Affairs division. I honestly don't know how effective any of this is, but worth a try. Hopefully I'm wrong in the not-so-rosy picture I painted. If you visit www.usps.com maybe there will be information on how to contact your local PO with a complaint because it's not always so easy to find the phone number of your local PO. Linda, thank you for your question.
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I don't know what the remedy is for this. Is there some plastic cover that could be put on top of the cluster box or does the rain leak in from the side? It sounds quite negligent of the landlord not to keep the cluster box in satisfactory condition so the mail doesn't get wet and ruined. If you bring this up to the USPS, I wondering if they would just refer you to the landlord and a cycle of frustration would continue. We have a note that we give to individual residences that says "your mailbox needs attention" when there is an issue, but if I don't know if that would pertain to a cluster box and the landlord may not even see the note if he isn't there. If all of the residents who receive mail in that cluster box would sign a joint letter and mail it to the landlord requesting the box be repaired or replaced, maybe that would carry some weight.
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