When I say that the US Postal Service doesn’t get it, I mean they really don’t get it.
Anytime you have government sponsored monopoly you get to make the rules. Since the inception of UPS, the US Postal Service has been losing ground. Why? The answer is simple. They don’t get it.
When the postal service started getting a letter or parcel was a thing of magic. News from afar, a gift or something else really cool, something you wanted was arriving. Then came “direct mail”.
Direct mail is what most of us think of as “junk mail”. If you go on vacation for any length of time your mailbox is stuffed. I don’t get any important mail at my home at all. Everything goes to a PMB or “personal mail box”. They filter 90% of the junk and most direct mailers have gotten smart and quit sending stuff to PMB mailing addresses. My bills are all paid online.
Since the Covid – 19 shopping shutdown, online shopping has gone bonkers. Amazon commercials show happy drivers in happy trucks making deliveries. Sadly that isn’t always the case.
Amazon Contract to the USPS and UPS
Amazon uses whatever method it can to get you the package as cheaply as possible. Somehow the US Postal Service got on the list. Since the US Postal service doesn’t get it, why did Amazon give them the work?
In vacation towns like Truckee California, Amazon boxes are stacked floor to ceiling in the post office because the Post office says the address doesn’t exist. In my case today the address not only exists but we were home waiting for a very important package. You can see from the picture that the carrier didn’t find my house even though the fire department, police department, permit department and trash company have no problem finding it.
Because I work on the road and am not home often, so much mail was stuffing the mail box I filed an NMR. NMR means No Mail Receptacle. I put the mailbox in the garage. I had no idea the US Postal Service considered this a slap in the face and therefore decides my home no longer exists. In the world of e-commerce, the US Postal Service clearly doesn’t get it.
While in line hoping to find my delivery, I overheard other people with the same problem. One woman was franticly waiting for test materials with a fixed text date on the horizon. I forgot to mention that UPS, FedEX and the occasional Amazon driver have no problem finding the house either. You would think that the hundreds of boxes returned daily in vacation areas would get Amazon to rethink how it uses the US Postal Service. I have asked that the USPS delivery option be removed from my account.
Who knows how many more deliveries I will miss. I will shop Amazon less because of it. When it comes to parcels, or things the buyer pays for, the USPS should get it and drop the package off even if there is an “NMR” on the house.