D2 moved into an apartment in Brooklyn in late June. She and her roommates still are unable to receive mail at the apartment. The first four weeks or so were the fault of the management, which had not put up mailboxes and a lock; now the fault lies with the post office, which has not installed whatever it needs to install. I’ve called the local (Brooklyn) post office once and was given a run around. Any suggestions?
Why not just share a P.O. box at the post office.
I’ve thought of this, but it seems that the rent should be reduced if the tenants aren’t receiving the legally required service (yeah, I looked it up) of on-site mail delivery and they have to pay to receive mail elsewhere.
Is this a new apartment? How did previous tenants get their mail?
In addition, I would suggest that your daughter contact the P.O. herself. It’s her mail. We were unable to do anything to activate or deal with our DD’s mail. She had to do it because she was the mail recipient.
Why would their rent get reduced? The apartment person has fixed their issue. In addition, I’ve lived in places where there were no mailboxes…period…and tenants had to get P.O. boxes at their own expense.
Plus… This is now a P.O. issue.
My D ended up having to go into the post office. She couldn’t figure out why they weren’t getting mail even after putting their names inside mail box. The front clerk at the post office went and checked and the address was marked as no one living there. He left a note for the carrier to start delivery.
My other D recently had to go show the local post office proof of residency to start mail and get a key. Her area is rural and has a group of boxes on the end of the road.
My daughter did contact the post office herself. She was put into three different lines and told she needed to talk to the supervisor but wasn’t told who the supervisor was and was finally told the supervisor would be back on Monday. She can’t call or go there Monday to Friday because she works.
New York state case law indicates that landlords must provide mailboxes on site.
Old building, apartments are new.
Any suggestions for getting through the P.O.'s bureaucracy would help. I’m not a P.O. basher. I want to send my daughter mail; she wants to get mail.
problem numero uno being in NYC…problem number 2 dealing with the post office (being in NYC makes regular post office issues/attitudes even more fun)
get a p.o. box at the ups store or something. otherwise you will have a super hard fought battle. living in new york is hard this is par for the course.
@zobroward, I think you’re right. I might suggest the P.O. box at the UPS store. The prices are okay and the UPS store near my daughter’s apartment is much easier to deal with than is the local post office branch.
roserd55, you may be in the “right” with expecting to get mail delivery to your daughters apartment and may even have “legal” rights to do so with the landlord tenant laws in new york. but, choose the battles with the landlord carefully. broken heat, broken plumbing, rats etc… these are the issues that must be hard fought. but between the landlord and the post office you will go insane. good choice to get a private mailbox. maybe the mail carrier is pissed about getting an added stop on the route or it could be a landlord /post office issue things work differently in NYC. ( I have heard stories about how things work in NYC and if you are not from there it maybe hard to understand what the actual issue maybe)
plus being in NYC a lot of shady fronts have private mail boxes as an adress. your daughter can meet some interesting “entrepreneurs” while picking up her mail!
Your mention of rats is helping put things in perspective. One of my brothers lives in NYC, and during his sojourn in Manhattan, he reported finding a “rat butt print” in his apartment.
So far, D2 and roommates have also gone two months with no gas, so they’re becoming experts in cooking with appliances other than the stove. The building three doors down, scheduled for demolition, collapsed suddenly in July. And when the toilets weren’t working properly early on, the maintenance crew came and took them away, leaving two holes in the floor.
my birth certificate says I was born in NYC ,that is where my connection to NYC ends! I feel fortunate my parents moved far away when I was really young. my mom is a diehard new yorker and gets pissed when I talk about the “city” . some better places to live post college in my opinion austin,tx…fort lauderdale Fl or Pittsburgh pa. (the comeback city, that I have yet to meet a person who has been there and not said wow that is a really really cool place)
anyway I digress!! I know for many people NYC has a bizarre magnetic draw.
We had an awful time with the Boston post office when S first moved there. I finally called the post office in my town and my post master said he would look into it for us and he did. There is an internal procedure he was able to do and he was able to find out where the package was that was supposed to be delivered to son’s insurance agent (car title, etc.) The PO in Boston kept on telling us they didn’t know where it was and were impossible to work with.
We don’t trust the Boston PO at all and so anything important we send to him Fed Ex now. Costlier but worth it.
Over many years of sending packages via the U.S. postal service, the only one that I can recall totally disappearing was sent from a suburban Boston post office. It was some of my daughter’s stuff that she couldn’t cram into her luggage when she was returning home after an internship last summer.
I’m reading and watching Charles Dickens’ “Little Dorrit.” The Brooklyn post office reminds me of the story’s Circumlocution Office. The name says it all.
Rosered55…are you saying your daughter’s apartment has a gas stove, but no gas? Why? Is this a landlord issue.
If he’s has a kitchen, I believe she is supposed to have a working stove. That’s the battle I’d fight!
Yep, gas stove but no gas. My daughter and her roommates negotiated a lower rent because of the landlord’s failure so far to get the gas hooked up.
I hate to say this…but is sounds like this apartment was NOT really ready for occupancy.
Easier to solve the mail issue than the gas issue!
Oh, yeah, it wasn’t ready for occupancy. The tenants decided they could live with the lack of a functioning stove, especially because the landlord agreed to the lower rent.
Is it a safe apartment for your D to live in?
It appears safe and comfortable otherwise. They were told that the delay in getting the gas hooked up was because the city is being very thorough about examining and approving gas hookups since the explosion in Brooklyn (last year?) that killed a few people.