Bulk mail is presorted by the senders so the post office is not taking it from Ohio to Texas but it arrives to its destination. Also, they have more time to deliver. A first class letter is supposed to be delivered in 3-5 days, but bulk mail has 5-15.
Elected officials have franking privileges for official mail, but when they are running their person campaigns, they do not and must pay for sending out flyers, letters, packages. It’s easy for most to use bulk mail because they are running local or state campaigns, not national campaigns, so the sorting is easier.
You can receive amazon packages delivered by the post office on Sunday. I try to pick an option that doesn’t deliver on Sunday because of my personal preference
In general, parcels and certain priority mail may be delivered on Sunday in certain locales. (USPS signed a contract with Amazon a few years ago to start delivering packages on Sunday, if necessary.)
Per the USPS website, a first class letter (or #10 business envelope) is supposed to be delivered in 1-3 days, not 3-5. In fact, the USPS delivers ~90% of first class mail within 3 days.
My letter carrier said that campaign mail receives priority treatment even tho they pay bulk rate. That’s why, at least in our area, no campaign flyers are delivered after election day ever (which would be the case if the mailers were handled under the 5-15 day delivery time schedule).
No one on our street had mail delivered yesterday. The mail was sorted and my Informed Delivery showed that I had several pieces of first class mail so it’s not the sorting machines.
I know our lack of delivery a few weeks ago was due to a shortage of carriers due to COVID at my local post office. Luckily, a few days later, all mail was delivered. Due to Informed Delivery, I do see what is coming, so not terribly concerned with a day without mail, unless I have something important coming. One item that was delayed was a replacement credit card, and a check my husband needed to get deposited.
Yesterday our regular carrier was out and the sub left the mailboxes unlocked on one row. We live in a community where there are 4 cluster mailbox units, and it seemed he left one section (8 boxes) unlocked. Our community Facebook page blew up with angry homeowners; you would have thought he threw the mail from his truck out into the street! We are a fairly quiet community, and having our mailbox unlocked is no different that living in a house with your own mailbox that doesn’t lock. Sure, someone could come take your mail, but one would hope your neighbor wouldn’t do that. One neighbor said he was going to register a complaint with Post Master General tomorrow.
Earlier this week, we found our mailbox, part of a cluster in a locked lobby, open. There was one piece of junk mail in it, h8ch was what we expected, and we suspect the carrier was a sub.
But the story I came intending to share is that, on Friday, my brother received a 2020 Census Questionnaire postmarked April 8.
I wouldn’t expect any mail, first class or other, to be delivered in one day. Even local (and they used to have a box for local sorting) can take 2-3 days.
Colorado secretary of state has decided to mail all ballots by first class mail. In the past the post office has given preference to the ballots but with all the publicity they’ve decided to pay the extra and make sure ballots are delivered on time. We’ve voted by mail for almost a decade, and the post office has been great.
I can’t really blame the post office if they treat ballots, political material, and flyers as bulk mail (if they are stamped that way) and deliver them that way (longer time). That’s what the sender paid for, and just because the post office has been generous in the past doesn’t mean they can afford to continue to do that. Like a lot of other businesses the USPS was hit by covid in having employees out sick, air routes and truck routes eliminated or delayed, an increase in shipping they weren’t expecting and couldn’t fix immediately. Some of the post offices around here have been low on supplies like priority labels and boxes because the volume has increased and they have no way to get the supplies back in stock.
I think people need to chill out a little. We’ve had a sub mailman this week and our mail has been arriving about 5 hours earlier than normal!
I have mailed two packages to Thailand since August 5th, when I mailed the first. The second was about 2 weeks later. Today, emailing the recipient, the second regular first class package arrived. But the priority box sent early in the month has not. Checking on the tracking, it was stuck in Chicago from August 7th until today, when it was sent to the international shipping center. To be fair, flights were cancelled. But I have sent a few things to Thailand during this time, with no delays of this sort.
Our mail people still have to park and walk house to house. All of our boxes city-wide are attached to the house and not on the street. The other day we had delivered a dumbbell weight rack via amazon. I felt terrible for the carrier as they had to haul it up the steps. I had enough trouble dragging it into our house.
That being said, I had one piece of mail shown in informed delivery that didn’t show up the day it was supposed to, but the other items did come. I think that has happened maybe 3-4 times ever. But this was my new driver’s license/real ID. Fortunately, it did come the next day.
And now, this week, in So Cal, the newest is that 2 large Budget rental trucks dumped large piles of unopened mail in 2 separate alleyways in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale. Very unsettling what’s going on with the mail…
Piles of unopened United States Postal Service mail and packages were discovered dumped at two separate locations this week in Glendale, authorities said Friday.
Police responded to a call about 8 a.m. Thursday from the USPS, asking police to assist with a situation involving “possible stolen mail or whatever was dumped in an alleyway,” said Glendale Police Sgt. Christian Hauptmann. The second call came about two hours later from a business owner who witnessed a similar incident in a store parking lot not far from the alley.
Security footage obtained by KTLA from outside the 7Q Spa Laser & Aesthetic in the 1600 block of Glenoaks Boulevard shows a Budget rental truck backing into a gate before a man retrieves piles of bags of mail and packages from inside the truck and throws them onto the ground. The parking lot is less than a mile away from the alleyway in the 1000 block of Allen Avenue where the other pile of mail was discovered.
USPS declined to comment on the incident.
“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement, crime prevention and security arm of the Postal Service,” spokesperson Evelina Ramirez said. “In order to preserve the integrity of their investigations and to prevent fundamental unfairness to the subjects of those investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service does not comment on any ongoing investigations.”
It’s unclear if the two incidents are related. They come as the USPS faces national outcry over recent service changes, sparking fears over voter suppression as the Nov. 3 election nears.
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra said Thursday the state was attempting to reverse the Postal Service’s new policies.
A ballot collection box has been set up in a local park. Is it a prank? Is it official? Who in their right minds would use it? If this is the sort of thing we can expect, I see all sorts of trouble. The boxes will be used as trash cans and be soaked with thrown away sodas etc. so as to be unreadable. They could be set on fire. The entire box could be carted away.
In Colorado, where we vote by mail, there are ballot boxes all over the place and even in parks. However, they are by the rec center buildings, bolted down, under surveillance cameras 24/7. They are like the blue post office boxes with just a slot and I guess someone could put trash in them but it would have to be skinny trash.
There is a big procedure to pick up the ballots. Two people come to pick them up, put them in collection boxes that are zip tied and signed and dated. Again, all under the watchful eyes of the camera.
Check your county for the locations of actual official ballot drop boxes and for what they look like (the county web sites often have photos of them), if you are concerned about fake ballot drop boxes.
I saw on my Facebook needlepoint group that a woman mailed 12 items to be finished several weeks ago. She said that the package was lost in the mail. She is sick, actually everyone is sick for her. They closed the thread, so I don’t know if it was found or not because I am not on Facebook that much. I can’t even imagine the work that was put into those projects.
