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.
Albert, your message posted 2x so I will answer it once and then copy and paste it. I currently work 7 hours a day as I am on a limited schedule for personal reasons. A regular city letter carrier can expect to work 8 hours per day (plus 30 min. unpaid lunch), 5 days per week. The 5 days may not be consecutive since mail is delivered 6 days per week. As a new hire, you will likely be a CCA (city carrier assistant) who has a very varied schedule and I'm not sure they are guaranteed any hours. I believe starting pay is about $16/hour for a CCA, with very few benefits, if any. Once you are promoted to a regular city carrier, the salary increasea to about $23/hour and tops out at about $28.50/hr after a certain amt. of years. These salaries are set in accordance with a labor agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which is our union. You also get benefits once you become a regular city letter carrier as opposed to a CCA. If you visit the website www.nalc.org they have pay charts listed or you can probably just do a google search or look on www.glassdoor.com. Good luck in what is a pretty good career in my opinion.
I know this response is likely too late to help you out for today, but I'll let you know my opinion. If all the scanning of the package is done properly, then the package should have been on some delivery vehicle (not necessarily the regular mail delivery) to bring the package to your address by the end of the deilvery day (apprx 5PM local time.) I hope you have received it. I make the qualifier "if the scanning of the package was done properly" because there are times where the information as to where the package is or "attempted" but wasn't really, comes up when you use the tracking number. That brings down the integrity of the scanning data. For the most part I believe the USPS does a very good job of giving the correct tracking information on packages, but I've heard stories to the contrary at times. Thanks for writing.
I don't know the answer to this question. Maybe you can renew the PO Box via check or credit card. The USPS main customer service phone # is 800-275-8777. If you can manage to get a human on the phone, maybe they can help you further or send a msg. to the PO where your PO Box is located to say you are out of town and will renew it upon return. There is probably a small grace period, but I can't say for sure. If you don't get in contact with the PO and don't renew the PO Box rent, any accumulated mail will likely be returned to the sender with a label stating "Box Closed, No Forwarding Order".
Sorry to say that we can't guarantee arrival of a birthday card on a specific date when mailed via regular class mail. We do, however, have a decent record of getting most letters delivered the next day when mailed from the same city, and 2-3 days when mailed from further away. To play it safe I'd mail the card 2 days in advance and, if you prefer, you can write "Do Not Open Until Your Birthday" on the outside of it. You are a thoughtful friend. Good Luck!
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Tiffany, I am not sure if that can be done. By telephone or Internet, you can put your mail on hold so the mail isn't delivered and piles up in your mailbox while you are in the hospital. As far as taking the mail out of your box and taking it back to the PO, I'm not sure. In your request to hold the mail, you'd have to ask for them to take out any accumulated mail. If I received a request like that, I would probably honor it given the circumstance. I've just never had that request. Thank you for writing and hope you are better.
Kyle, I think the normal amount of time for a First-class letter to get from Lancaster, PA to Charleston, SC, would be 2 days. From what you wrote it has already been 4 delivery days and the letter hasn't arrived. I don't know that it's rare, but it exceeds our service goal as far as I know. Are you sure you addressed the letter correctly and completely? Letters still get lost in the mail, missorted, misdelivered, destroyed by our automated sorting machines, etc. but that is all a very low percentage of the amt of mail processed.
I am not really sure of the procedure that your letter carrier is supposed to follow if your specific mail slot becomes full. I understand that they probably didn't want to bring it back to the PO where it can be held usually up to 30 days before being sent back to the senders due to a full mailbox. The carrier probably felt that it was a safe environment to leave it in the junk cubby even though that area was possibly accessible to anybody. I hope that no mail was missing that you can tell. You made no mention of that so I presume you think it was all there. Technically the letter carrier should have been on the safe side and brought the mail back to the PO since you live in a multi-unit building, but I often have the "no harm, no foul" attitude meaning it's no big deal as long as nothing looks as if it was tampered with. I know that others will disagree with me on this comment. It is similar with packages to be delivered. In the area I work in, it seems to be a very safe suburban environment so parcels are left when nobody is home as long as there is no signature required. In other areas where mail/package theft may be an issue the USPS may require somebody at an address in order to release a package.
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