I received 3 letters in the mail today that were delivered to the wrong address. It is usually only 1 or 2 a month. That doesn't sound too bad but then the mathematical wheels in my brain start to churn and questions begin to work their way to the surface. If I am getting 1 or 2 letters a month that were actually supposed to be delivered somewhere else, is there a chance that some of the mail that was supposed to come to my address is being delivered somewhere else? The answer is, "of course".So, how many pieces of mail that were addressed to me are ending up in someone else's mail box? How can a company expect that once they put a bill in the mail box, the bill payer is responsible for it?
Lets be conservative and say that I only get 1 piece of mail erroneously delivered to my mailing address each month. That would be 12 pieces each year (very conservative number). There are 30 houses on my street. Now we are up to 360 pieces of mail that are delivered to the wrong address annually. There are at least 200 homes in this subdivision. That multiplies out to 2,400 pieces of mail that are showing up at the wrong address each year in 1 small subdivision in Austin Texas. A statistic from USPS.com states that they have 152.9 billion delivery points. Going back to my conservative count of 12 pieces of mail that are not delivered to the right address annually, that calculates out to approximately 1.8 trillion pieces of mail that are delivered to the wrong address each year. That is a lot and yes there is a larger number that do make it to the correct address but that is not the point of this thought.
The point to this thought is not to offend anyone working for the U.S. Postal Service, although it probably will, (hence the term) but instead to show how you can not just toss a letter, payment, invoice or anything into the mail box and assume it is going to get there. The system does not perform at that expected / assumed / taken for granted, level of capability. Certainly not for businesses that want to hold customers accountable, for something that they are assuming the customer is aware of, simply because the business tossed a notification letter into a mailbox somewhere. There are a very large number of mail items that do not get to their intended destination.
The check may very well be in the mail and it just never made it to where it was supposed to go.
05/01/16 - Some Things Never Change
(Response to a text message that the item had been delivered. )
This item was not delivered as reported. I have not received it.
Thanks,
Joe
(Their response back requesting me to go look for the package that was supposed to be delivered to my address.)
Hello!
We are very sorry for the issue you're having. Please note this item was shipped via USPS Priority Mail. The tracking online shows that your package delivered on 04/21/16. Please carefully check with your neighbors, any front office, lockboxes, or anywhere your mail might be left.
Here is a link for the tracking showing the delivery of the item:
www.xxxyyyzzz.com
Please follow up with your local post office and/or your regular mail carrier if you're still unable to locate your item.
We hope this information is helpful!
Thanks!
7th Avenue Costumes 800-704-9684
Monday through Friday
9 am to 6 pm EST
(My response back. They refunded me the money but I would have much preferred to have recieved the merchandise.)
Thanks for your response. The postal service is a completely unreliable resource and they prove this to us all over and over again. A business cannot just put something in the postal services care and then expect them to be an extension of that business's commitment to their customers. They simply do not have a customer service culture and based on my experiences and observations, their culture is exactly the opposite of what a business needs.
I need the product that I purchased from your company. You assumed that the USPS would complete the transaction on your behalf. They apparently did not do so. I paid you for the product and you are responsible for getting the product to me, the customer.
Please send me another order and ship it in a manner that it will arrive by Wednesday of this week and I would like the shipping to be paid for by your organization.
Regards,
Joe McLaughlin
