BIG RANT: US Post Office – Westwood (and a question about the complaint process)

[Aim]

(Apologies in advance for length)

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We haven’t received mail in a week, other than the Tuesday Junk Mail that always comes, and a circular on Monday. We normally receive quite a bit of mail (+/-3 pieces of first class mail a day – very unusual for us not to have mail), so I was a bit suspicious when the carrier hadn’t delivered any “real” mail for a week. Today, I received notification from our insurance company that a letter, confirmed to have the correct address, was returned to them as “undeliverable.”

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So I called the Westwood Post Office, and spoke with Freddy Tapuro, who told me he was the supervisor there. He asked our carrier (who apparently just happened to be standing next to him at 9:30am, a time when he’s normally delivering to our street) and the carrier supposedly told him that he’s been delivering our mail daily for the last week. Freddy suggested that our mail is being stolen.

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But here’s the rub: I was home for 4 days over the weekend, taking some time off work. I was home when the one circular was dropped in our box on Monday, and I was home when the carrier did NOT come to our door the other days. In fact, because I was waiting for something, I was watching for him on Saturday morning as we did yard work in the front yard. The house is small enough that if we’re home, we know that someone has come to the door. In fact, Irukandji would tell you that a couple of times when she has dropped something off on our porch, I’ve opened the door and startled her.

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Freddy, supposedly the supervisor, tells me that our carrier says he’s delivering all the mail. So how is it I don’t see the guy, we haven’t had any regular first-class mail in a week, and we have confirmation our mail is being returned to the sender? The supervisor refused to help, suggested I get a locking mailbox, and refused to consider that the carrier may be slacking or that our mail is somehow being waylaid along the way. (He also told me there were items in our slot at the post office today, so if there isn’t mail today, I definitely have a few more things to say to him!) In addition, he was incredibly rude and not the least bit concerned that we weren’t getting our mail.

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My question, after all of that: to whom do I complain about the supervisor refusing to take a complaint? How do I file a complaint about the carrier as well as his supervisor who refused to take my complaint?

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[JanS]

Aim, that’s interesting. When I had my office at ActivSpace, which is 98126, under the Westwood office, I was constantly having to go out to the post office to inquire about mail. Hope you get this resolved. I hated the experience with them, their lackadaisical attitude, etc. Wonder if someone at the main office downtown would know the chain of command.

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[Ken]

I have had stuff returned to sender as undeliverable when my local carrier never even saw it.

I know my carrier and a few of the subs and when I had a rash of them being returned, the carrier met me at the box and we verified that nothing I was expecting was making it to his presorted pile.

It cleared up shortly after that and a check of the sender showed that they were printing the address in a way that obscured the “SW” part of the address and it was probably being kicked out by the mechanical sorting process. Seattle addresses are pretty much useless without the quadrant since there are at least two equally valid addresses in the city for most addresses.

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[Aim]

That’s helpful, Ken, thank you. I will verify the exact way the address is printed and whether the directional is cut off, as I’m having the insurance company fax me a copy of the returned envelope. In the confirmation email sent by the insurance company the address is correct. Our street name is short, so I can’t imagine it’s being cut off, but perhaps. I’m also sending a test piece of mail from my office, knowing full well I’m addressing it correctly :)

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It was, and remains, incredibly irritating to me that the supervisor simply discounted my issue without trying to help in any way. He very easily could have come up with the scenario you described, had he given a rat’s ass.

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I’m not inclined to trust that supervisor. In fact I don’t believe the carrier was actually there when he was on the phone with me. I’ll check with the carrier next time I’m home and can catch him, as I’m fairly inclined to trust him if he tells me to my face he’s delivering everything he has.

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Thanks for the sympathy, Jan.

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[celeste17]

If you still feel that you want to lodge a compliant I would call another office (maybe downtown) and ask to speak to a manager (I don’t know what they call the next level of supervision) and lodge a complaint with them. Or last time I was in the junction office there was a supervisor in the office just off the lobby maybe you could talk to her.

There has to be someone that person reports to.

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[luckymom30]

Try this link:

http://www.usps.com/customerservice/welcome.htm?from=global_footer&page=customerservice\

We had problem with mail delivery quite frequently afew years ago, the carrier would stay inside his truck and drive from house to house never getting out of the truck then I would find him the block behind us sleeping under a shady tree. Finally after not receiving several bills we were expecting I contacted the Post Office at Westwood, the name of the supervisor was not Freddy as you state and long story short what we discovered was the mail carrier was tired of doing his job so he took our mail and many of our neighbors mail home night after nigt until he had over $100,000 pieces of mail inside his home that did not belong to him. I was then contacted by Postal Security and they told me they would place an envelope with a $5.00 bill inside to see if the mail carrier would take this bait. He did! House after house he collected the envelopes, left the empty envelopes on the street and took yet another nap. Then shortly after afew ays days later I went out to get the mail, the mail carrier was next next door deliverying to my neighbor and he left our mail outside and on top the mail box so I asked him to please place our mail inside the mailbox and if there is more mail than can fit the mailbox to please place it behind the scree door. He then ran over and started yelling at him, cursing. I felt threatened and so did my neighbor. My daughter was home with me and her and the dog went inside our bedroom and called 911. Good thing as the mail carrier parked his truck across our driveway totally blocking us in. Soon later I received a call from Postal Security that they were outside in my driveway had arrested the mail carrier and that I could come out the house. Our neighborhood has had 2 former postal carriers in prison for emblezement.

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[Aim]

luckymom, thank you for the link. For some reason I couldn’t see the customer service link when I was on their site before — likely because I was too mad to see straight!

Your scenario is a really extreme example, but it’s not unheard of. That was EXACTLY why I was so frustrated when the (so-he-said)supervisor tried to tell me that we “just don’t get much mail” after I’d clearly told him we get a fair amount, and refused to even consider that there may be an issue.

Are you willing to say what neighborhood you’re in? I’m in Highland Park, and it would be interesting to know if anyone else is having an issue. I’ll be talking to the neighbors tonight.

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[luckymom30]

Arbor Heights. Also the mail carrier we got right after all that went on Melissa told us that on a regular basis the mail carriers do not sort through all the mail they receive each day so that is why it can take days or weeks to receive certain items.

By the way we are house hunting in Highland Park.

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[swimcat]

I’m in 98126 and get regular mail (mostly junk, but it’s several peices a day). Sometimes we’ll go a five day stretch where we’ll just get one or two peices, or none at all. I have found it strange and after reading this thread will keep better track. For a while we weren’t getting our weekly ads either, or they would show up on Fridays if they were ever delivered. I actually look at those ads to plan my weekly menu so it was irritating.

We also receive mail regularly for the former occupant of our house- it’s been over 7 YEARS since that woman lived at our address. There are clearly worse problems to have obviously, but I will be more careful about paying attention to the mail now.

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[Aim]

Luckymom, what are your requirements? There’s a SUPER cute place for sale really near us. Maybe we’ll end up neighbors :)

Mystery solved. I got the insurance company to fax me the returned envelope, and it had a sticker on it with “NO FORWARD ORDER ON FILE. RETURN TO POSTMASTER OF ADDRESSEE FOR REVIEW.” It was also stamped with the big pointing finger graphic, with “not deliverable as addressed” checkmarked. I’m going to be down there raising a bit of a ruckus this afternoon, so if any of you are at the post office and see a woman tell the supervisor what-for (in a professional, courteous way,) it’s likely me.

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[luckymom30]

How big is the house near you? How many bedrooms, does it have a large garage and how big is the lot? Our requirements are: at least 4 bedrooms, 1-2 baths, lot size larger than 8,000 sq ft, and must have 2-3 garages or space for more storage. We have tons of stuff, we have alrady gone through most and given away tons, sold some at garage sales and donated alot to charity. I really like Highland Park and the best part is we have friends that live there and sounds like if we move there we can count you as a friend too!

I really hope I was able to help you out, it is just so frustrating not receiving your mail and getting the same answers from the Post Office or no answers at all. Please be careful and really watch when you receive and don’t receive your mail because a pattern started happening here and then we got Postal Security involved.

And when I enter the Westwood Village Post Office and overhear someone giving them heck I will be glad to show my support.

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[Aim]

I think the house near us is 2-3br, not as big as you’re wanting. I’ll keep my eye out though!!

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[Aim]

Luckymom feel free to email me at aimgrrrl at gmail and I’ll give you the scoop on the neighborhood, as well as keep an eye out for any houses that fit what you need.

The “other half” called the post office back and got someone different, who was apparently very nice and said it was a matter of “carrier laziness” and she is currently having a chat with him about doing his job.

So, there it is. Bottom line, someone was round-filing our mail, or leaving it on the truck. Problem solved. I hope.

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[me on 28th Ave SW]

Wow, what an awful experience. I have occasionally been irritated by the Westwood employees, but that is a whole different level of rude. Thank goodness I have the absolute best mail carrier in the Westwood neighborhood; yay Mike! I do notice when he is not working (incorrectly delivered mail and somewhat delayed deliveries) and that makes me appreciate how great he is even more.

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[JoB]

me too.. i can really tell when he isn’t at work…

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[transplantella]

Although the OP certainly seems to have a legitimate complaint……

I would like to take this opportunity to defend the US mail. One of the best and most secure national mail delivery services in the world.

And our local mailman Kevin, who does a splendid job and who is well know and well liked by all in the neighborhood. Kevin–you rock!

If you have a legitimate complaint about mail theft and non mail delivery, so be it. But on the whole the US mail service is almost unparalleled in its quality of personnel, commitment to service, and importantly, lack of corruption.

Try living in about 150 other countries where the local post is a drop box to nowhere. Nothing gets delivered, the post office refuses to even sell stamps, and almost everything is pilfered or stolen.

The US has exemplary mail service 98% of the time and it’s a darn shame they’re totally unconsidered day after day and year after year–till something goes wrong. Nobody ever says “Look! My payment checks were delivered on time and not stolen, disappeared, or destroyed, my bills arrived from the other side of the country in 3 days time in perfect order, my neighborhood mailman has walked his butt off for the last 20 years sorting mail for ever more customers in ever less time and doing a near flawless job of it all day after day in every kind of weather condition.

Lots of stuff in the US sucks, but the US Postal Service is one of the best in the world. Period.

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[CeeBee]

If you still want to shake up some folks at Westwood, depending on if you think you got a real response of just a answer to get you off their backs, you can contact the Postal Inspection Service directly, referred to in an earlier post as Postal Security. My dad worked for the Inspection Service for 15 years and, while he couldn’t talk much about his cases, they were always investigating carriers for theft and mail abuse.

Family vacations also involved stopping at many small town post offices to drop off test envelopes to measure the speed of service, and I was probably the only kid in Bellevue to have full sized posterboard fingerprints with matching ID indexing lines hanging in her bedroom.

https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/

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[rockhills]

When I lived in Florida with my parents, we had a really great mail carrier. He was retired, and working for the postal service until his wife reached her retirement age, then they planned on moving out of state. He was a little too conscientious, however. He knew everyone in the neighborhood, and all about our lives, so naturally he knew when I took a temporary job out of state. To be helpful, he went ahead and reported me as ‘no longer at that address.’ Unfortunately, I was still having all of my bills sent to that address because I didn’t want to go through a series of several quick address changes (a sure recipe for foul-ups). End result: big credit mess for me.

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[Mike D.]

I empathize with the OP. The Westwood Branch of the USPS has staff members and supervisors that are anything but stellar, and frankly, plenty that are incompetent.

I recently placed a call to Westwood to inform them that they were cramming mail into an overflowing mailbox of a house near ours that is no longer occupied and that the cramming was likely to attract mail theft as the mailbox door kept falling open. Call taker at Westwood said they would see to it that the Carrier clean out the mail and stop delivery. Two weeks later the mailbox has yet more mail crammed into it and the mailbox door continues to come open.

A neighbor, who is quite diplomatic, tried to have a conversation with a supervisor at the Westwood branch about a developer who was without any kind of notice installing a large 16 unit locking mail box to serve his new housing development. The box was being installed in such a way that it would be blocking access to a parking place on another elderly neighbors private property. There were PLENTY of other options to install the box elsewhere that would not have any impact on anyone, but the Westwood supervisor wouldn’t hear anything of it, said he had made up his mind and live with it. The developer expressed zero interest in trying to pursue the multitude of other options. Needless to say he has not won any points with neighbors if and when he makes attempts to develop yet more housing in the neighborhood.

This posting of mine is not a condemnation of the USPS as a whole, it is intended to focus attention on the Westwood branch which needs to clean house.

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[KatherineL]

I called the complaint number once when my outgoing mail didn’t picked up for several days. The complaint then filtered down from federal level. I got a rather surly call from Westwood later and my mail was picked up for a while. When it happened again, I called Westwood. I haven’t had any more problems. In fact, one day when I didn’t get mail out in time. I ran after the mailman. He seemed almost frightened, asking, “Did I miss that? Did I miss that?”

I think they vary the routes. The two I got to know were friendly and responsible. Then there will be a stranger and the time the mail comes changes.

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[Aim]

We have an update, of sorts.

My husband called the post office again yesterday afternoon, and got a different supervisor – a woman – who took his complaints VERY seriously. She put him on hold for about a half hour while she interrogated the carrier as well as the other supervisor as to why they hadn’t followed through. Originally, she told my husband it was carrier laziness and that she’d take care of it.

A couple of hours later, she called us back and said she’d done more investigating, and it looks like there is some sort of problem with the sorting machine, as we’re getting the presorted mail, but not any of the first class. She is still looking into it, and while she said she had never seen this happen before (sorting machine appearing to reject perfectly correct addresses) she is researching and will get to the bottom of it.

We’ll see if we get any mail today…

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[Laconique]

Glad you got some resolution, AIM. And I’m sure she’s never seen any problems with a giant government owned and operated sorting machine. *snort*

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[JanS]

I can just hear/see it “Oh, my, well, this has NEVER happened before. Oh, dear”…..hope they dock the machine’s pay…

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[anonyme]

I live in Arbor Heights and also get delivery (if you can call it that)through Westwood Station. I have lodged dozens of complaints and made at least 50 or more calls over the last 4 years. The service is atrocious. My mail is often not delivered at all, misdelivered, or outgoing mail not picked up. Like one of the above posters, I am frequently home and outside all day and never see a carrier. Once my regular carrier found 3 weeks of my mail, including a package, stuffed in the box of a vacant house. The station managers (who change every few months) are not helpful, and the local customer service reps are outrageously rude – on top of being unhelpful. I’ve even tried the federal online complaint form, but they told me I’d have to resolve the issue locally. It’s a relief to hear that I’m not the only one having issues. They always find a way to marginalize and dismiss individuals who complain. I suggest we find a way to lodge a complaint as a group. Patty Murray’s office can handle this, and they have told me they get frequent complaints about the USPS.

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[anonyme]

Just one more thing, not a big deal but I’m just curious: does anyone in the Westwood/Arbor Heights area receive an IKEA catalog? Supposedly they are sent out to everyone in the Seattle metro area. I always got one everywhere else I lived in Seattle. Since moving to Arbor Heights, I can’t get one no matter what I do. If no one in this area gets one then that would seem to indicate that Westwood Station is dumping the lot of them to avoid delivery. Either that, or IKEA is practicing some kind of neighborhood discrimination thing, which seems unlikely.

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