We get other people's mail in our mailbox often. Stand alone at the end of the driveway, not a cluster of mailboxes.

The USPS person on our route drives around with one hand on the wheel and the other hand wrapped around a phone glued to her ear so no surprise that mail doesn't get in the correct box. When she first started this route, she would drive up the driveway, honk & wait for someone to come outside to pick up the package, unlike the delivery person who retired that she replaced.

The honking routine didn't last long. I know there are shift workers (day sleepers) in this neighborhood and a couple of homes occupied with quite elderly folks. I suspect the PO got an earful from some of them.

Elmer - I completely agree with everything you said. My comment about investigating was meant for the carrier to investigate a dishonest or incompetent employee. When raee said it’s “extremely common” in her area, that would suggest there’s a problem somewhere. It’s a very rare day that we don’t get a delivery. I just counted and we’ve placed over 30 Amazon orders since April 1. Add other mail order, poshmark, etc. it’s constant deliveries. And while I’ve had items delayed on rare occasion, I don’t recall once having anything missing, not once. Nor incorrect delivery status reported. If it were “extremely common” I’d be less apt to use these services.

FOAS - my pre-pandemic experience mostly mirrored yours. USPS has been hit or miss at the holiday season for a few years, but other than that discrete time all delivery options were competent.

Sadly that is no longer the case. I've had multiple Amazon experiences similar to Lars and USPS delivery in my area is now a very bad joke.

For whatever reason Wal-Mart is actually kicking Amazon's behind for me in terms of reliable delivery. And even they have had some missteps.

Lars...like another said, when owning two homes, maybe it went to the other house?

NOT the same thing, but a few weeks back I ordered a small 14k diamond ring and the tracking just stopped right after it left the seller. I opened a "not-received" claim, a month later...I was refunded. The seller tried to tell me that always happened, not to worry, it would just show up....

Incompetence or just not caring. We now have a big issue with USPS. We had an awful carrier. Always putting wrong mail in our box, and often from across town, not just direct neighbors.

She was caught on Ring doorbell stealing an envelope from a mailbox and putting it in her bag.

The story: a person dropped off an envelope with $25 dollars for a school activity. the owners showed this proof to the post master, and nothing was done for a long while.

Legally, we are not supposed to put anything in someone’s mailbox, so was she right to take that letter? DI’d she turn it in though? I doubt it.

Our status now is a different carrier every day. I spoke to the post master because my request for a mail stop was ignored! I see activity on my Nest doorbell. He told me that this was still G’s route. They took her off the truck and she delivers mail on foot.

what the heck does this even mean?

A friend checked my mail, and the mail I am getting, is for the neighbors next door.

It‘s a mess out there.

LarsI hope you somehow get your package.

I use Informed Delivery from USPS. When I receive notification from USPS that a package was delivered, and it's not in my box I print off the notification and tape it to the group mailbox along with a note including my address where the package should have been delivered. It usually turns up fairly promptly.

I checked Amazon's site for missing packages (which was difficult to navigate), and eventually I learned that they expect me to contact USPS and report the package missing. USPS has a two day delay requirement before a report can be made, and so I will have to wait until Monday, or maybe Tuesday. Today (May 8) they allow the earliest date as May 5, but maybe it is too early in the morning.

In the meantime, I can only hope that a neighbor will deliver the package to me. I definitely gave Amazon my Cathedral City address, and I change my default delivery address two days before I leave one place or the other. We are spending five weeks here, and so that is plenty of time to receive deliveries here, and I did receive other deliveries here from Amazon a few days ago. Our mail from L.A. is being forwarded here temporarily.

If I were in Los Angeles, I could easily have gone to a store to get what I wanted, but shopping in Palm Springs is not as good as L.A. and some things (like what I ordered) are harder to find here. I could probably find what I'm looking for in Palm Desert, however, and so I might have to do a bit more exploring there. We've only been here for two years and only part time at that, and most of that time was during the pandemic, of course.

Another problem here is that a number of people (like me) are only part-time residents, and so they might not pick up their mail that often. I had to hand deliver quite a bit of mail to someone across the street when we got here two weeks. We had been in Los Angeles for six weeks before arriving, and so there is no telling how long his mail had been in our box. Some of it looked rather important.

In L.A. our mailbox is on the wall next to our front door, and so our security camera films the mail carrier whenever mail is delivered. The carriers are almost always on their phones when making deliveries, and their conversations usually sound rather frivolous. Even though our mail is being forwarded, they are still delivering junk mail to us, which our neighbor is picking up so that the mailbox will not overflow.

Terezosa, I need to do that here. My brother has that set up for our L.A. address, but I haven't done that here yet.

FYI - the package delivery at the cluster mailboxes of our gated, lake community (second home) had gotten to be such a problem that the post office now delivers packages to our porches. All other mail is still being delivered to the boxes.

We were only asked to be sure that the street number on our houses is easy to see.

The carrier has the same gate access as Amazon, UPS, FedEx and the like.

You, and your neighbors, might want to ask the post master about doing the same.

I don't think anyone in this neighborhood gets their mail delivered to their houses, as there are a lot of cluster mailboxes here. It is certainly easier for the delivery person to drop for mail for 20 addresses in one stop, and mine is convenient to me because it is right next to my driveway in front of my neighbor's house. One of the boxes is defective because someone broke into it, and so it does not lock anymore, but it still gets mail delivered to it.

The post office does deliver larger boxes to our door - ones that will not fit in the mailbox.

I haven't really talked with the neighbors here, except one neighbor when we first bought the house. I hired him to fix a leak in our sprinkler system, but he did a bad job, and so I haven't used him for anything else. He doesn't really live next door, but his father does, and they have a landscaping business together. Unfortunately, he visits his father a lot and brings his daughter and son with him, and they are extremely loud. The daughter is about 11 years old and screams constantly when she is playing outside with her friends, who also scream constantly. The son is younger, and he screams as well. Once they did this in my front yard, and I had to tell them to stay on their own yard. The daughter retaliated by stealing the landscape lighting along my front sidewalk that night. The neighbor on the other side is not social. She is quiet, but her basset hound is not, when he is left alone in her back yard.

What is frustrating is the disruptive time consuming brain time trying to decipher all the possible scenarios that may have occurred. Who to contact, who is responsible...

I've had too many miss-steps to bother mentioning the past year and a half.

Just this morning I had to scan a possible overpayment on my credit card on-line. I was send a double yesterday....from an identical delivery two months ago. Makes no sense but at least I have the original product but why two more and expensive.

This one is in my favor but it is uncomfortable.

I do like, once delivered, package and photo together at the door so many are using now. In an e-mail. My package at my door. If it ends up at neighbors door it is clear proof it was delivered wrong.

20 bucks is not a huge amount. It is the time involved.

Yes, extremely common here, and not restricted to Amazon deliveries - it is all packages, and mail that can be anticipated (bills, statements) that never arrive or arrive weeks late. It has been so for years now. At least one neighbor has reported having informed delivery tell him that certain mail was being delivered, only to never actually get it.

Also there have been news stories, quoting actual USPS delivery personnel, that talk about the burden of the ever increasing packages and how they resort to falsifying the delivery info in order to meet the quotas.

I do think that USPS overall does a remarkable job, but there are definitely increasing problems with that "last mile" whether it is due to poor technology, poor training, poor quality hires, impossible demands or a combination of all of that.

Was anyone else wondering what iced tea spoons are? Internet says they’re 7-10 inches. Are these them? I think of these as milk shake spoons.

"I checked Amazon's site for missing packages (which was difficult to navigate), and eventually I learned that they expect me to contact USPS and report the package missing. USPS has a two day delay"

I've not done that. I give it 48 hours and then I contact Amazon. Other than leaving a note to my mail carrier I don't even try to make a claim through USPS. I just deal with amazon , and they always take care of it.

"The Amazon drivers take a picture so no way to fake that."

Respectfully disagree. At least one of the Amazon delivery drivers does not have a good relationship with the truth. It is not uncommon to get delivery notifications that claim the package "was handed directly to a resident" when no such thing happened.

Most of the time we get delivery notifications with a photo:

These are the iced tea spoons that I ordered, but I really do not use them for iced tea - that's just the only name I've ever heard for them. I didn't have any here in Cathedral City, and I miss them, as they are the spoons I use the most often in L.A.

Here's a quote from the product description: " this cocktail stirring spoons have the sleek edges, no shaved,and will never cut your hands and mouth." Glad to know that they are not shaved and will not cut my mouth! I think only a grapefruit spoon might cut my mouth.

I use them for stirring a lot of things, and I would use them for iced tea if I still drank that. They are great for cocktails that are in tall glasses. The ones I ordered are 7.95" long, and I chose them because I have 8-1/8" long space in my silverware organizer. I bought the ones I have in L.A. at Surfa's Restaurant Supply Store in Culver City, and I've not yet been to a restaurant supply store here, but I did find that there are several in Palm Desert, and so I should probably check them out. I don't have my car here, but I can drive Kevin's pickup. I prefer my own car in L.A. because it is smaller and easier to park, but this is not an issue here, since the streets are wide, parking spaces are huge, and nothing is crowded.

I'll be checking my mailbox again on Monday (tomorrow), but so far no neighbor has delivered my package. There is nothing to prevent someone from keeping my package and considering it a gift from the post office or Amazon.

Lars.....you have the greatest estate sale and 2nd hand stores in the world, in LA! You should GO shop!

""The Amazon drivers take a picture so no way to fake that."

Respectfully disagree. At least one of the Amazon delivery drivers does not have a good relationship with the truth."

Are you saying the delivery never arrived, not even on a delayed basis? Or are you somewhat overstating what happened simply because the wrong button was pushed? It's not something to take too literally. I've had deliveries, and I'm sure others have too, where the indication that finds its way into the record reflects an irrelevant clerical error as to a minor detail but not as to the substance of what happened. There's no intent to be untruthful.

No, elmer, it wasn't a matter of "the wrong button being pushed." It has happened WAY too many times for it to be an accidental push of the incorrect button. The examples I posted were delivered two at the same time on one day, and two at the same time the next day. They are most definitely not the only notifications we have received that say the package was "handed directly to a resident." Although we don't always get a picture, the vast majority of the delivery notifications say the "package was left near the front door or porch."

Does the record consistenly say deliveries are made when there's been no delivery? I asked that question of you above but you didn't answer it.

We have always received the Amazon deliveries, although a couple of times they delivered to a neighbor who then brought the packages to us.

My concern when getting a delivery notification that claims the "package was handed directly to a resident" when it was NOT handed to a resident, is that if one of those packages ends up missing, it becomes a "they said/I said" situation. A delivery person should never, ever, under any circumstances put on a delivery notice that the package was handed directly to a resident if it, in fact, was not. I do not consider an out-and-out falsehood about a package being "handed directly to a resident" when it was, in fact, left on the front porch to be a "a minor detail but not as to the substance of what happened." Further, your statement that, "There's no intent to be untruthful." isn't accurate because it is a deliberate mistruth on the part of the delivery person to claim a package was "handed directly to a resident" when it, in fact, was not handed directly to a resident or to a random person on the street. What is so damn hard about saying the "package was left near the front door or porch"?

Every time that happens to me I just contact Amazon and tell them what happened and without question they refunded my money how ever I selected. Or I could choose to place the order again. Zero problem.

"We have always received the Amazon deliveries, although a couple of times they delivered to a neighbor who then brought the packages to us."

No one is perfect, a delivery to a neighbor once in awhile is understandable. But when a delivery is received as expected, to accuse the driver of lying is more than a little extreme and rather unwarranted. If you got the item timely, why care what the record says?

"... to accuse the driver of lying" when they have not been truthful about how the delivery was made does not fall into the "is more than a little extreme and rather unwarranted" category. It is lying. Plain and simple. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that I feel that a delivery notification should tell the truth?

So, elmer, we have established that you don't give a rat's patootie if all of your delivery notifications say that the packages were handed directly to a resident even if they were thrown against the garage door, bounced off, and rolled down the street because, heck, you ultimately received them. So what would your opinion be if, someday, a package isn't delivered to your home and isn't misdelivered to a neighbor, but the delivery notification says it was "handed directly to a resident"? This is where you will say that you would then contact Amazon and comment/complain that the delivery wasn't received and you want it replaced. But Amazon will take the stance that, sorry, the delivery person handed it directly to a resident so you're out of luck. You'll say, that, no, the delivery notification wasn't accurate. Amazon will say that you've never notified them before that a delivery wasn't handed directly to a resident even though the notification says it was.

And, "to accuse the driver of lying" when the driver has, in fact, NOT BEEN TRUTHFUL isn't an accusation. It's a statement of truth.

I think for most people, their interest concerning a delivery ends with the delivery. Who cares what the record says if the item is in your possession within the time frame expected?

If I don't receive something when expected and in the condition expected, I tell the shipper, as I think I've explained a few times. I communicate apologetically. I don't complain. With the one exception I mentioned about a one-off purchase which I resolved myself, I always get responsive treatment from Amazon and from others too.

I don't play junior detective or secret shopper to assess and communicate the delivery record for a correct delivery. It isn't my business to do so, nor anyone else's either, and if the delivery was made as and when committed, time to move on.

Something I've heard from more than a few retailers/businesses with individual-facing operations- many of them keep records on dealings with customers and how polite and respectful they are to deal with. And nicer customers get better treatment and more consistently the benefit of the doubt.

I try to be polite and respectful dealing with businesses in any event. Maybe you don't. It's something to think about. Nothing is accomplished raising a stink when in the end there really isn't a problem.

yes, I ordered a book from Az. Got a note it had been delivered. had not. arrived 4 days later.

<Lars.....you have the greatest estate sale and 2nd hand stores in the world, in LA! You should GO shop!>

That's what I intend to do now, as much as possible. We bought all of our dining room furniture at an estate sale across the street from our house in Westchester, including dining table, dining chairs, and a sideboard. We also bought side tables at the same sale for a very low price, although the dining table and chairs were not cheap, although they were worth what we paid for them.

I have also bought silver dessert spoons and dessert forks at an antique/second hand shop on La Brea for less than what the silver itself is worth. I'm not sure how to find iced tea spoons at such a shop, however, but the Revivals Thrift Store in Cathedral City is excellent, and we have bought a lot of kitchen items there, including measuring cups, bread pan, various drinking glasses, teapot, not to mention new bath mats, swimming trunks, and some very nice shirts and shorts. I also bought an extra set of stainless steel ware, and so perhaps I can find iced tea spoons there as well. For the battery tester, we will probably have to go to Ace Hardware in Palm Springs.

Lars I bet there are people who would pay to have you (with your experience and eye for fashion) to be a shopper for them.

Lars, I don't remember you ever saying you've shopped Ebay. There are about 10,000 listings for iced tea spoons there.

I have two sets of 8 Oneida 18/10 Act 1. Great weight and very pretty. I don't think I've used them to serve iced tea in the last year with no one coming over, but do like them for milkshakes, floats, tall drinks. We eat pretty casually when its just the two of us and they even make great serving spoons when wanting that last little bit of condiment out of a jar or tall container. I've been buying a silly large size of Farmer Bros au jus powdered mix and decanting into a reasonable size container for my spice cupboard. Tall and narrow. 3 heaping iced tea spoons of mix into 2 scant cups boiling water makes au jus to serve with steak ;0)

I hadn't heard of ice tea spoons, but I have a set of Korean spoons that are 10-11 inches long, to go with my metal Korean chopsticks. I suppose, Lars, I could use these as you use yours. (They arrived via Amazon a few years back.)

Amazon drivers don't show up in my area of the boonies, but I like the idea of them taking photos of the packages by one's doorstep.

Back when I lived in Connecticut, I had a whole run of UPS drivers leaving the next door neighbor's packages at my house. We had nearly identical first names, but our last names were not remotely similar. There was one occasion I was gone for 10-12 days, and found her packages by the basement door upon return. Fortunately it had not rained! I let her know after that she could always check my basement door if she ever saw packages there, if I were again out of town.

Interestingly, none of my packages ever ended up at her place!

Lars, hope your spoons show today!

I guess I could have bought the on Ebay, but I did not think of that☹️. If I do not get what I want from Amazon, I will order from there, but I will have to wait until I get back to LA., and I can just as easily buy the spoons at Surfa's when I'm there. At this point, I am much more inclined to buy from a brick and mortar store, even though brick buildings are very rare in L.A., due to earthquakes.

Lars, a comment you made reminded me that at our vacation home, which is in an area heavily populated with second homes and part time residents, our post office quite often holds packages instead of leaving them in our mail boxes or parcel lockers. Our mail boxes are also a cluster of boxes at the end of the street, not individual boxes at each house. Have you checked with the local post office branch? Apologies if you did, and I missed that. This is a long thread. And, BTW, the only way we discovered that the post office was holding the package was because a neighbor told us.

It sounds like there may be regional differences, perhaps for regional reasons. I can only speak for myself, and for the most part I have shopping options. Skimming through the past couple months of Amazon orders, I estimate that more than 2/3 are ordered for convenience, i.e. I could probably find the items locally but it’s more convenient to swipe and expect delivery in a day or two.

Such convenience would quickly be offset by frustration if I had to deal with missing orders, or delivery notifications for orders that did not arrive, etc. Expecting me to wait for 48 hours to see if an item comes or if I need to submit for a refund would not be my idea of convenience. Excellent issue resolution, while much appreciated, does not negate the fact that there was an issue to start. Nor does eventual delivery.

When people have choices they are less apt to accept mediocrity.

Yadda, yadda, yadda, and then... "I try to be polite and respectful dealing with businesses in any event. Maybe you don't. It's something to think about. Nothing is accomplished raising a stink when in the end there really isn't a problem."

You presume to know more about me and my actions than you actually do. Nowhere did I say that I have complained to Amazon about the falsified delivery notifications. For the record, I have not.

I like that we can search Amazon past purchases...

FOAS, like Lars, I use 'iced tea' spoons all the time. From my set of 8 I bet 4 or 5 are in the dishwasher any given day. My most used kitchen utensil. They fit in all my spice jars, and the smaller fridge condiment jars. Reach deep in tall jars. A good tasting spoon, mixes dressing and sauces...

This posting reminded me I need a set at the beach house. I last purchased in 2018. I hesitate ordering blind but theses are good quality. Previously I had a singleton from a yard sale but I was always misplacing it.

I'm not sure how the 'rabbit' app works. Correct me if I am wrong but I think only usps can use my mailbox. First half of 2020 was a delivery nightmare for many. If Amazon and others were using 3rd party deliveries,...(I saw SUV's and unmarked vans, etc)...they would stuff smaller packages in my mailbox rather than walk up our driveway. An Amazon tracker 'rabbit' would not have a 'left in mailbox' option. If it is indeed illegal.

When I googled 'handed directly to a resident' I think I saw around 22million searches. Not sure how I worded it at that time. It appears to be very common and very confusing. As we were. Both home and no barking dog.

Pre lockdown we had maybe one mix-up in 5 yrs. A package went to a neighbor then brought to us a few days later.

Lars, I like the flat bottom design of the spoons you ordered. Rather unique; I've not seen that design in iced tea spoons before. I have a couple of flat bottom serving spoons that I like a lot so think I would like that in an iced tea spoon. Only downside that I see is that some of the reviewers remark that the spoon portion is small. Of course, that could be an advantage some of the time.

I have always known those long handled spoons as 'iced tea spoons'. During high school, I worked in a drug store soda fountain. We never referred to them as milkshake spoons even there. But then again, this was in the mid south/ southwest-- iced tea drinking country. Oh, and I never, ever drink 'sweet tea' but have consumed hundreds of gallons of unsweet ice tea.

One of my peeves is that now, as iced tea has become widely available, even here in the upper Midwest--offerings in those multi-dispenser soft drink machines at fast food joints--it is difficult to find just plain tea/ no sugar or other sweetener as an option. Of course, the good stuff is freshly brewed tea made at home anyway.

Anyhoo, I would re-order the flat bottom spoons, take half of them to the other house (if they don't show up today) and bring some from that house to this one. So you have both designs (assuming the other ones are not flat bottomed ones) at both houses. And sort out the details with Amazon later.

The shopping mecca of the world at your feet! ♥ If I could color this "green" I would. lol I paid .15 cents a spoon for my two sets. The ARC Thrift store just has a bin of silverware. I had to dig through it to find a "set". One bin is real silver. The store I shop, I should clarify, is inbetween 3 gated communities. People dump everything when they move. I've seen designer chairs still wrapped in the shipping plastic. It's obscene the waste I see...

Lucille.....I'm sure Lars gets offers of shopping for people ALL the time...I do! ♥ When I'm in The ARC, there are people with carts FULL of clothing, stocking their used clothing stores.

The post office has left other small packages in my mailbox here, and they have never held any of my mail. I don't get much mail here, and so there is no need to put it on hold or have it forwarded. I do have mail forwarded here from L.A., however, as that is where we get most of our mail. In Cathedral City, we mostly get junk mail, other than the mail that is forwarded from L.A.

I might consider taking half of the spoons to L.A., but I have a good supply there. I do not know whether the ones I have in L.A. will fit in my silverware tray - they might be a bit too long. They do not have a flat bottom.

I received my package this morning at 10:20, but it was delivered to me by a kind neighbor instead of the post office. He did not get his mail until yesterday and didn't have time to deliver it to me until today, but at least I finally did receive it.

Needless to say, I am not happy with the post office. I am definitely going to look into having my mail scanned before delivery like my brother does with our mail in L.A. before I order anything again. This delivery did have a tracking number, but the tracking said that the post office had delivered the package to my mailbox but instead it was delivered to a random mailbox in my neighborhood. At least they got close enough so that the person receiving it could walk it over to me. I've received mail in L.A. that was addressed to a completely different street and zip code, and I had to return it to the post office.

As for the iced tea spoons - they fit very nicely in my silverware tray in a rectangular compartment that is too narrow for regular spoons. This turns out to be okay because the bowl part of these spoons is rather narrow. This will be helpful for getting things out of narrow jars, but I might take the advise above and take half of them to L.A. and bring half of the iced tea spoon there to here. I think they will still fit into the compartment I have for them.

I'm very happy to have these spoons now. The battery tester will get a lot less use, but we do have a large collection of batteries that appear to be useless, but I want to confirm this before recycling them, as the expiration dates are 2029.

I'm glad that the package turned up.

Just as a somewhat amusing aside: a couple of years ago, a piece of regular mail was delivered to me in error - the correct address on the envelope was several streets away (house number similar to mine), so I just set it out for the carrier to pick up, which he did. A couple of days later it was back in my mailbox. Repeated the exercise, and once again it was re-delivered to me.

I was able to flag down the carrier the next day and ask him to please verify the address on the letter he had delivered. He looked at it and said, "What about it?" I said, "This is not this address! You've delivered it here 3 times!" He looked again and said, "Oh, yeah, it isn't, is it?" No explanation of how that happened but I never got it again - hope it finally made it to the right address! (I was dealing with an illness at the time else I would have re-delivered it myself, as I usually do).

I just tried to sign up for "Informed Delivery" and got this message:

<This service is currently unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

Go To USPS.com>

Who knows when I will be able to get Informed Delivery. It also appears that it did not accept my application for a new usps account. I cannot use my L.A. account for this because it is a business account, and Informed Delivery is not available for business accounts. I used to do a lot of shipping when I lived in Venice, which is when I signed up for my original usps account.

I think I will have to remove cookies to make it work on this computer, which is my laptop. I do not use my laptop in L.A., and so that will be okay.

Someone called me yesterday. A piece of mail addressed to my husband was delivered to someone in a town 156 miles away. Fortunately, the person who received it, has a sister that knew us, and my phone number and called me. She said she will put it in an envelope and send it on to me.

I don't know what is up with the USPS. I used to mail out around 100 boxes of waterlilies a year, a few years ago. Never a problem and delivered within 2 or 3 days.

My husband was taking some very expensive medicine that was $9000 and delivered every month from a pharmacy in New Jersey. One time it didn't show up. It was in a post office in Missouri City, sort of a suburb of Houston. They had it over a week already and instead of sending it on to us, they were getting ready to send it back. We were able to trace it there and picked it up there. I figured the town or zip code or something must have been wrong. Nope. Perfect. Correct name and address. Why they didn't send it on.....I have no idea.

lars, try using a different email address for your place in the desert. I encountered a problem with the USPS website when trying to put a mail-forward request for a second home. It seemed that the USPS account approach is one sign-in account= one address only. Maybe not, but by creating a new user account with a different name (no middle initial) and entering a different email address, it worked fine.

The USPS has been handicapped by too much politicization (especially in the last 4 years), underfunding, and an employee union that hinders change, cost rationalization moves and flexibility. And poor management. Like other government-related services (yes, I know it's quasi-independent), you get what you pay for and don't get what you don't pay for.

I'd bet that the union would come to the table and negotiate better terms on a win-win basis if a commitment were made to boost subsidies. The savings that could be wrung out of thoughtful restructuring of operations plus providing added funds could substantially improve service. It's like far too many governmental and other non-private sector organizations - poorly managed, bloated staff, not the best employee base, limited ability to dismiss or discipline poor performers.

For now, USPS seems to have too many unmotivated and underperforming employees who in addition need to deal with organizational problems. Better management, better oversight, could do wonders. It's an essential service that needs to be better. Like potholes in a busy highway, we can't continue to do nothing as problems mount.

Oh, and they need to fire all the cheaters and liars, the kind who say they've left a delivery near a gate when everyone can see it's near the front door. ;-)

I just tried to sign up for "Informed Delivery" and got this message:

<This service is currently unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

Lars I occasionally, and randomly, get that message from informed delivery. Most of the time I will wait a minute, try again, and get through.

I did use a different email address, but I used the same cell phone number, and that was what caused the problem. Lucille, I did do what you said and was able to get into my new account.

They are unable to identify me on line because of this, but they will be mailing me a verification via first class mail, and then I will be able to register for Informed Delivery, I hope!

I agree that the post office has a lot of unmotivated employees, especially at the post office in Westchester that I use. I believe all of the employees there live in Inglewood, and they are extremely surly instead of polite and helpful. They remind me of AMTRAK employees in Philadelphia and Newark, who were equally surly. The post office employees in Cathedral City are instead extremely nice, friendly, and competent.

Too many of those I've encountered in actual Post Office locations (of which there are far too many) seem brain dead or groggy as if having just awoken from sleep, and undeserving of their employment. For 15 years we had the best possible service from the guy who delivered to our house but since he's retired, the work is being handled by a rotating cast of graduates of the Three Stooges Academy of Slapstick. It's been awful.

I have been using informed delivery for some time and receive an email when I have mail. Large pieces will only say that a piece of mail was too large to be scanned. Packages will either give the shipping code or say you have a package in the mail. It does not do what you are apparently wanting it to do if I am understanding correctly. It will only show it was delivered. When I was missing a package it was the postmaster checking the GPS where it was delivered. In a cluster mailbox situation GPS unless it was delivered to a home rather than the cluster would be worthless. It also states to wait several days if something was not delivered when they said it would. Today I showed three pieces of junk mail. One I did not receive. The other two I did receive but in the picture they were on top of each other. If they had not been odd sizes I would never have known.

Here's the advice I got regarding Informed Delivery:

<terezosa / terriks:

I use Informed Delivery from USPS. When I receive notification from USPS that a package was delivered, and it's not in my box I print off the notification and tape it to the group mailbox along with a note including my address where the package should have been delivered. It usually turns up fairly promptly.>

That sounds like a reasonable plan to me, especially since I would not have many other options. I think it would also make the delivery person aware that he was putting packages into wrong boxes, in case he cares.