The “Water Cooler” is a feature on Claycord.com where we ask you a question or provide a topic, and you talk about it.
The “Water Cooler” will be up Monday-Friday at noon.
Today’s question:
How often do you get your neighbor’s mail (or vice versa), and how often do you not get any mail at all?
Talk about it….
32 comments
As far as I know, no one has ever gotten my mail by mistake and I’ve received my neighbor’s mail maybe once or twice in all the years I’ve been living in the same house. Two or three times a week I may not get any mail at all, thanks in part that I opted out of receiving junk mail.
I don’t have any complaints with my mail service, it’s been pretty consistent in the past thirty five years.
How did you opt out Dawg…went to their website and can’t find a way. I get tons of recycle.
Hey Simonpure~
Lots of the junk mail either has websites or phone number to call on the mail sent. We stopped the weekly sale ads, little booklets and others. It takes about 4 weeks or so for them to finish the cycle ads to you.
There are a few I’ve had no luck stopping. Getting mail for Hubby’s parents, who passed away years ago and never lived here!?! Still get mail from BMW cars, for old owner of the house,…it’s been 40 years!!
Thank you Mrs. Roz…have a great weekend.
Harte Hanks Direct Marketing
2800 Wells Branch Parkway
Austin, TX 78728
Ask them to please remove my name and address from your mailing list.
Be sure to include all variations of the names you use, including your full name and nick names.
Another one is:
Valassis Direct Mail, Inc.
PO Box 249
Windsor, Ct 06095
And another one:
The Direct Marketing Association
http://www.dmachoice.org
In Concord, I’ve never gotten a neighbor’s mail by accident.
Before moving to Concord, at my previous residence, I frequently got other people’s mail. I had a terrible mail man. For various reasons I suspected he had a substance abuse problem. He would urinate in the garage of the apartment building, and I caught him trying to steal a package. I almost never had anything mailed to that apartment, using a back up address instead. I did file a formal complaint about that mail man, but nothing ever happened as a result.
The carrier in our neighborhood is awfully inconsistent.
I had several of my packages delivered to my neighbor’s house recently.
Some weeks he does a good job, some day’s he’s not so accurate.
Plus, he’s really lazy. He tramps over flower beds and yards causing damage. I put up a small obstacle to encourage him to not walk on my flowers and he tore it down.
Neighbors have called the Postmaster, nothing has been done.
I really hope he retires soon.
The problem with being on a veteran mailmans route is they have so much vacation time built up,they only work 1 or 2 days a week.This is why youll se a terrible substitute still delivering mail at 830 to 9 pm,and I even saw the mailman on Sunday,becasuse he was unable to figure out his route Saturday and finish it.Does the postal service realize its very unreliable to have a veteran mailman because he’s never at work but a flunky is?They cant use a path,they have to trample everything.They are in a hurry to go home.
I get my neighbor’s mail occasionally, I just wish that the Walnut Creek post office would vacation hold my mail when requested. So frustrating, bringing this to their attention makes no difference!
I request mail hold online, and am aware of the less than 3 days rule. It’s a thing in my neighborhood, my neighbor and I check each other’s mail when we’re out of town. They have had the same problem. It’s not just us.
Get neighbor’s mail maybe twice a year, vice versa.
Since we have reduced our junk mail coming in, we only have maybe 4 days a week we get mail, if we’re lucky.
A few weeks ago, we received a letter marked “Tax Document” addressed to a neighbor on a nearby court. Last fall and early winter, we would regularly get our mail after 8 pm. On the other hand, today we got our mail around 9:30 am. This was the first morning delivery in years at least.
I cannot remember the last time I didn’t get any mail. It was probably during the last millennium.
I rarely get misdelivered mail. If it’s for someone on my street, I just put it in their mailbox. If it’s for a different street, I make a note on the envelope and put it back in my mailbox. My mail carrier in Concord refused to pick up mail that he had misdelivered, so I got in the habit of dropping it into my briefcase and putting it into outgoing mail at work.
Unfortunately, it happens more than it should around here. The post office worker bees with their headphones on cannot seem to understand that 7445 is not the same number as 7560.
Not exactly “numbers” people I guess.
headphones have nothing to do with reading
And cellphones have nothing to do with bad driving.
Service has been pretty good during the last decade. Occasional late delivery, carrier says main P.O. runs short handed and delivery trucks are falling apart.
Hasn’t been to bad during the last year, only a few pieces for a neighbor on the next block with the same number but different street name. However within 2 years, to this same neighbor I had to deliver a few packages and even a passport for someone in that house, a PASSPORT!
3 years ago a business in Walnut Creek hand delivered a envelope with a PO label saying “no such address.” It was my address. He was a process server so it was important. I also never received at least 3 rulings from the CA Superior Court as the return address. I had to go to the court to learn the rulings.
The PO always blames the carrier even though they said the label was put on in Sacramento. They lie a lot and I could never reach the postmaster. Nor would he return any messages.
Almost never, our post man is great.
Our regular carrier went on medical leave a year or two ago. Since then we regularly get other people’s mail, they get our mail, and sometimes mail never shows up.
Today for example, Informed Delivery says we were supposed to get ten mailpieces. Six were delivered. I suspect the missing four mailpieces are political advertising as they were too large or small to be included with the Informed Delivery images.
I’m getting concerned about the mail delivery truck. It’s a 1986 model. Our regular carrier understood its issues and babied the thing. One of the people that’s part of rotating crew of replacement carriers takes her personal issues out on the truck. The piston rings and valves are getting shot and the transmission will likely fail too. If the truck fails I suspect delivery will become worse as there seems to be a shortage of working trucks.
My mailman is dyslexic,and the business next door to me is a dentists office,with the same digits but in a different order.I give them their mail.They don’t give me mine,they cant walk 20 feet,they have to send it back to the post office.
If the work HAS to be done, it’s cheaper to pay overtime than hire another worker.
We frequently get other people’s mail. Received one about a week ago that belonged to someone not even on our street or even with our same number. One time we got our neighbor’s W-2’s. I hand walked those to them because I didn’t trust the carrier. I signed up for what is to be delivered that day. Recently we were suppose to get a piece of mail and never received it. After seven days, I notified the post office as instructed and nothing happened. Our mail carrier is always on her cell phone.
Yes, I am a fan of Informed Delivery and seeing what letters and packages I’m supposed to receive each day. A couple of weeks ago, a substitute carrier gave my package to someone else. As soon as I saw it marked delivered, I notified the Post Office. Two days later, it was marked as being returned to sender. Grrrrrrr! I did notify the original sender, and as soon as they got the original back, they sent me a replacement via Fed-Ex overnight.
For more information, go to USPS.com and look for the link for Informed Delivery.
We get our mailings about once a month along with all the other bigfoots.
We usually have one mail lady but there are also substitutes who don’t wear a uniform and the mail is late… if I find our neighbors mail I place in their box…
We get mail for a family down the street all the time. Our house number is the same, but we live on different streets.
The Troll’s wife monitors our mail via the USPS. We were supposed to receive two envelopes containing VERY confidential financial information (we are talking about a LOT of money). It never arrived, we reported it, and nothing happened. Mistake closed!
This happens all.the.time to us. Our mail service is super unreliable.
The substitutes always seem to have a hard time. This was unrelated to the question, but a little bit funny. Around the Holidays what looked like a personal card in an envelope with a name we were unfamiliar with arrived with our address on it. The return address was a gentleman in a Texas town. I googled the name and town, and up popped a phone number. Within a minute I was speaking to a sweetheart of an older gentleman whose daughter had given him her address wrong. In another 2 or 3 minutes he called me back with the right street number, and I walked the grandkids Christmas card and money down to the right address. A couple of years ago I was expecting some very pretty earrings by a well known silversmith I’d bought, and I was having some trouble patiently awaiting their arrival. Then one day they were marked as delivered online, so I went to get the mail and they weren’t there. The usual drill is to look all over the porch, then to wait a few hours, then a day or two, to see if they show up, but nothing. I have a word with the carrier who said he was out that day but that he will look for them. A few more days go by and still no earrings. I fill out some sort of missing package form. In a few days a letter from the Post office arrives that says they’ve investigated and my package was delivered, therefore they’ve fulfilled their responsibility so they’re closing the case. To prove the package was delivered to me they enclosed a photocopy of a grainy picture of a mail truck parked across the street, around the corner, and halfway down the block with a day/time stamp on it of the date it was marked as delivered, so case closed. There was a mail truck parked 250 yards away on another street that day, so clearly my package was delivered to me, right? The package did eventually appear on my doorstep one Sunday afternoon, I figured the person to whose address it was actually delivered found the time to bring it by, so all’s well that ends well.
2-4 times a year we get others’ mail. Since our mail was often missing and for sure was stolen once – a neighbor half a mile away brought us a stack of our mail found in his yard – we got a locking mailbox. I don’t know how often we get no mail because now I just check once a week.
I have been lucky. The only problem I have ever had is I received a plastic bag and in it was my mail. There was a letter from post office saying damage to letters sometimes occur. My letters were all burned up. There was a fire in the mail truck.
Mine is pretty regular, with some querks. Occasional furlough Thursday’s or Friday’s. One wrong address, which I delivered to the correct entity…make it two just in case I forgot one.
Some days are after dark, some afternoon. Our regular mailman retired 10 or so years ago. Now, we have two regulars and a few filler persons. In general I am happy with the service in light of what others endure. I try to leave the light on after dark to show solidarity with their hardship. I suppose that is silly.
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