MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
I dont know what you can do for sure to stop the owner's mail from being delivered to your unit if it has your apt # on it. Your neighbor may have contacted some companies to get them to change it, but I imagine names and addresses are often sold from one company to the next which results in the wrong address being distributed to other mailers. You can put a note in your mailbox saying "please only deliver mail for (insert your name(s) here" and that may stop your neighbors mail from being delivered to you. You are correct that it is your neighbors responsibility to advise senders of their correct address if the want to receive their mail.
I usually will continue to deliver the mail as long as the mail can be sheltered from the rain and other elements and hope that the customer will fix the mailbox in a reasonable amount of time. Some letter carriers will not deliver the mail to a mailbox that has fallen to the ground or is broken in some way. I suppose that is their option. If the mail isn't being delivered, it is likely being held at the PO for a certain amt of time (I don't know how long). You can probably go and pick it up there as long as you present identification that matches your address and if the clerk can find the mail that is being held.
I don't know what is technically the protocol for a carrier reminding themselves that a house is on hold. You make a good point. Most of our carriers have hold notes or cards they sequence in with the mail nearby so when they arrive at the house on hold, they would know to skip it. The note or card is then brought back to the PO for use the next day. I just memorize it from when I prepare the mail in the PO in the AM, but I would usually have no more than 10-15 houses at once who are on hold and their mail usually is left behind at the PO so there would be nothing to deliver even if I forgot the house was on hold.
I don't know but my guess would be 6 months or less. I don't know if there is still a test that needs to be taken to be hired as a City Carrier Assistant and how frequently the test is given. Many years ago, this exam wasn't given too frequently. Now I hear nothing about it so maybe it's an ongoing hiring process, where they are continuously hiring and training. From what I hear anecdotally, and what I personally see in my workplace we defintitely could use some new hires. It seems the demand for letter carriers exists, but the hiring of qualified candidates who make it through probation isn't keeping pace with that demand. Good luck to you!
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That is true Sergio. When a letter carrier is delivering from their truck and they can't access the mailbox due to a vehicle in the way or garbage cans blocking the mailbox, they can opt not to deliver the mail. I don't think they can just leave the mail on the windshield of the car impeding access to the mailbox. If there is a note on file saying explicitly that they can do this,maybe it would be allowed, but I wouldn't count on it. Generally, however, mail must be delivered to a mailbox or doorslot.
I can't say for sure what happened to the letter, but if it were originally misdelivered it isn't likely to have taken more than a month and a half to get properly delivered to you. The delay could be explained if the original recipient held on to the letter for awhile without putting it back in the mail to be properly delivered. It certainly is possible that someone in your house took the mail and gave it to you later, but I don't know your household dynamics or relationships.
I don't know the answer to this question. I can only speculate as to what I might do if I was a letter carrier who was emptying out a collection box and approached by someone asking to intercept their mail. I'll let you know that the times posted on the mailbox are the "earliest" time that mail will be collected from that box. It could be a later time than is posted so you could be waiting awhile for the mailbox collection personnel. If someone could prove to me who they were (with ID) or I personally knew them and could easily find their mail, I'd probably give it back to them. Sometimes the collection boxes near a post office are pretty full and it would be too time consuming to look through it for a couple of letters that somebody wants intercepted. I'm sure there is other personnel who wouldn't return it to you under any circumstances, which is why I can't give you a definitive answer.
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