Complaint Review: United States Postal Service - Nationwide

As a Retired Supervisor after 26 years of service with the USPS I have to make a rebuttal to Mario's comments on Rural Carriers. Rural Carriers are Postal employees and are required by Postal regulation to deliver any and all mail that is available for delivery that day, First Class, advertisement mail, (Junk Mail, hate that word), magazines, parcels and etc. They are paid via (route evaluation), pieces of mail, number of miles and stops due to added deliveries, markups, footage walked and etc. which is conducted each year to determine if the route has increased or decreased in the past year since their last evaluation. This is their pay scale since Rural Delivery existed. City carriers are paid on an hourly basis and have a strict 8 hour route built into their deliveries. Any thing over 8 hours for a City Carrier is overtime. To reduce overtime in a city delivery section Part Time City Carriers assist with getting the mail delivered by the 5:00PM delivery cutoff or advertisement mail (Junk Mail) is curtailed and left for delivery the following day. All Rural Carriers do no receive the same priveleges as a City Carrier. If a Rural Route is evaluated at the maximum of 9.60 hours that's all the Full Time Career Rural Carrier gets paid. If they work 12 hours they get paid 9.60 hours. Rural Carrier Associates, which are non-career Rural Carriers are paid either by route evaluation or by hour (green card time), depending on what they are delivering which could be express mail, 300 certifieds to a mobile home park, carrier breakdown and etc. All carriers are required to be back by 5:00PM. But with Rural Routes and Star Routes you may find your mail delivered past 5:00PM. due to heavy volume and excessive deliveries. No carrier is allowed to leave the route and watch a ball game, grocery shop or any thing else. If so, they can be charged with willful delaying of the mail and be removed from employment. If this is happening and Management is aware then Management needs to be disciplined, demoted and or fired. I've worked in New Jersey and Long Island for 6 years and 20 years here in Florida and NO CARRIER makes their own personal decision as to when you will receive your mail due to personal errands. And yes, Management ignores deadbeat employees and forces the extra work on the ones that work hard and want to do a good job each day. My famous words to my employees as a Supervisor, "THE POSTAL SERVICE IS ITS OWN WORST ENEMY, NOT THE COMPETITION". Cheers!

I have been working for the USPS for 3 yrs now and I hate it. The supervisors are horrible. The customers are ungrateful. The working conditions are even worse. I know your frustration with your car payment not getting there on time but as one person stated companies do let their boxes fill up before getting their mail. I had an experience when I sent a loan payoff for my car via Express mail. It took a week for it to get there and I got my money back. The postal service is cutting back jobs. They are getting rid of the clerks that handle the mail and putting more work on us the carriers. If you move I feel sorry for you because chances are you wont be getting your fowarded mail any time soon. In my office they got rid of the clerks that take care of the foward mail and get it ready for processing. I can honestly say that I have mail that needs to be foward sitting at my case for a month now. The mail has accumulated so much that it is about 2 feet long. As for the comment where employees call out sick. That is also true. One supervisor in my office is so bad that she drove 5 out of 11 of her carriers to call out sick and 2 went home on her all in one day. As far as the raises in price. Gas goes up so does the cost of transporting your mail. Getting your mail at 8pm I dont believe because there is a nationwide 5pm curfew. No carriers are allowed out on the street after that time. However if you are getting your mail that late it could be because you are in an area where mail delivered has been contracted out. Meaning the post office wants to cut our benefits and pay so what they have been doing is contracting out the work to companies that will do it for less pay and no benefits. I have heard horror stories about that. These people arent federal employees so they dont care. I have heard it being so bad that people just wont get their mail at all. Point is the USPS has alot of issues which are only going to get worse. The big wigs in DC want to cut spending and that hurts the customers. I can go on and on about how bad it has gotten but Im sure you guys get the point.

I worked at the post office for ten long years. They are overstaffed with people who do not want to work; they pay upwards of $40 an hour overtime to people who want to come in early on overtime and stand around talking, smoking, or sitting on their behinds in the breakroom. Try finding good employees who want to work; it's impossible! I was dragged from area to area to help get the work done, while around me people just stood and talked. It pissed me off to no end that they were getting paid the same as I but were not working. There is always mail to move in any postal facility, but try finding anyone willing to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. This is what the unions do to the postal service. Understaffed, ha. Maybe in some areas, like letter carriers. The supervisors for letter carriers are usually so horrible that the carriers call in frequently; the carriers willing to come in and take the crap and risk daily writeups for 'nothing', are left to handle the volume of mail. It's a sick cycle and just one reason why the postal employees would get a rude awakening if the post office ever went private! If they had to fire every lazy, worthless, slacker employee, they'd be left with maybe 25% of the workforce. If they fired every lying, abusive, backstabbing, law breaking supervisor, boy oh boy! Those ranks would be THINNED mightily! As it is, supervisors get promoted higher and higher the worse they treat people. It's a badge of honor and a sign that the supervisor is effective when they get many grievances filed against them. I know because I was one. But it goes against my beliefs in how to treat others, to lie to or about someone in order to facilitate their dismissal or discipline. I won't falsify anything for anyone. And I can't stand giving less than 100% for a job; but having to give 200% to make up for the lazy people is just too much. It's NO wonder service sucks!!!!!

I think that the USPS should outsource the work of delivering the mail to Guatamala. That will save you a lot of money, but you have to ask this question... What is some guy in Guatamala going to do with your mail if you need it in El Cajon? As for people getting their mail at 8 or 9 PM, that depends on your area and who delivers your mail. The post office garantees you one mail delivery (if you have mail) per day but cannot guarantee a time. Putting mail up depends on volume. Example, if your carrier recieves 4 feet of mail, it should be up in about an hour. What if he has to put up 12 or 16 feet of mail? I am a carrier and I average 12-14 feet of mail per day, but have delivered as much as 32 feet in one day. How could I possibly get to your house at the exact time using that example? In most CITY delivery areas, most carriers have to be back no later than 5PM. Doesn't always happen but now that is pretty much the norm. In a RUAL setting, rules are different. Most RUAL carriers for lack of a better word are "independent contractors" so if they have to go to a ball game in the afternoon, you get your mail at night. It depends on their contract although they can also vary by locartion). If you live in the sticks, you really cannot complain about what time you get mail, but should be happy that you do.

It's pretty well documents that the service of the United States Postal Services is in a state of decline. There are many areas mail is routine delivere as late as 8 or 9 p.m. Priority Mail is actually slower the regular class and false advertised as using the same distribution stream as Express Mail. An Express Mail service has become much less reliable when the switched over to having FedEx carry their Express Mail packages. The USPS could use a little competition. Maybe the government should remove the monopoly the USPS has on delivery of the mail.

As a person who handles the mail, I can tell you a little about companies who you make payments. It's not all companies, but too many. You seem to assume that the bill has been paid when the USPS delivers your payment to a company. I know of a few companies that let their PO Boxes just fill up for days before picking up the mail. There are also those who just don't get things processed in their own mailrooms. Most domestic mail is delivered within 3 days. It's a fact measured by an independent company. On occassion, a letter is delayed briefly but not on a regular basis. In any case the PO only gets your 37 cents. On the other hand, the company on the receiving end has an incentive to make a late payment claim against you. They can raise your interest rates, charge late fees, and otherwise hold you hostage. Most companies are honest and process their incoming mail promptly. If it happened once, I might assume it was the USPS's fault. Twice tells me that either you mailed it close to the deadline, or the company likes getting your late fees. It's interesting that the certified letter made it on time because the company had to sign for it. That letter was transported along side the regular mail, in the very same containers. It isn't any faster, just proof of delivery. It's a good bet that this company received the certified in the same amount of time it received your regular letter. It just couldn't get away with charging you a late fee this time. On the subject of a rate increase, the USPS hasn't raised rates in a few years. Inflation has still climbed and so has the cost of transporting mail. The price you pay at the gas pump is the same price paid by the USPS. The Post Office isn't getting rich off of this. In fact, it's not even keeping up with inflation. There are a number of other contributing factors to the rate increase, but rates have stayed below the rate of inflation since 1970. It is a shame that your package from MN took so long. I deliver packages every day from all over the country. That isn't the norm, but unfortunately it does happen. I look at the dates they are shipped and the vast majority arrive on schedule.