*Originally published on another blog of mine, Miscellaneous Notes, now republished here with slight edits and modifications*

Complaint One: The USPS Consumer Advocate

As I reported earlier, I sent a letter on Dec. 20 to USPS Consumer Advocate to ask about the official name of its “National Capitol (or Capital)” station. And as I said it was returned to me, on Dec. 23, unopened and seemingly undelivered. Strangely I saw no irregularity that could have caused it — The “TO” and the “FROM” were clearly marked, the stamp affixed, and the letter apparently reached a processing facility to be cancelled with a postmark.

This naturally got me wondering what could possibly have gone wrong. I’ve rarely mailed inquiries to governmental agencies before, so I thought perhaps they require a return envelope and a postal worker, feeling the thinness of my envelope, thought (rightly) it lacking in that department, and sent it back. So I prepared anew, this time enclosing in my envelope a pre-written return envelope with stamps, and mailed it again on Dec. 24.

Yesterday, on Dec. 30, I got that back, once more unopened but bearing all signs of having reached a processing worker. Either there is some conspiracy at work that systematically diverts all correspondence bound for the Consumer Advocate, perhaps in an attempt to insulate them from all postal complaints, or, far more likely, the Consumer Advocate’s Office has some weird policy regarding acceptance or rejection of incoming mail that I’m not aware of. I will probably just overcome my guilt of bothering them for such a trivial matter and just write to the Postmaster General’s Office instead.

Complaint Two: The Speed of Delivery

The second issue is arguably more problematic — I mailed the first of my self-addressed letters on Dec. 18 from three post offices that are quite literally twenty minutes away by foot, yet so far, by the end of Dec. 30 I have received none of them. As a matter of fact, of the 7 letters I mailed, only 2 have found their way back, an impressively disappointing statistic. Most sources I consulted insist on a 2 to 3 day delivery time, and I am not glad at all to have proved them wrong.

A possible explanation is the recent labor shortage of USPS — Labor unions have complained mightily about it, or at least the forces at play that contributed to said shortage: low funding has led to low pay and high turnover, which, in APWU’s words, caused the public to “[lose] confidence in the USPS’ ability to deliver mail promptly and efficiently.” I, for one, has certainly lost said confidence, although I find it hard to blame the postal workers themselves. Perhaps the answer lies in one of those processing sites that I should go see sometime.

I will probably also upload a spreadsheet detailing the time it took for USPS to deliver my letter from each of the branches I visited.