Category Archive: USPS

March 9th, 2010
post by tamalechica | | Closed

Post Office Service, the bad and the good

Complaining about lousy Post Office Service is nothing novel, and now I join the ranks of the masses in doing so.

My favorite Post Office location is not in my zipcode, but is a short walking distance from where I live. It’s the little station over on Montrose near Damen. Normally I have always liked that station, and I still do.

For many years, most of the time I’ve always had excellent service. There were a few years where all three windows were handled by clearly some of the best postal workers around: conscientious, helpful, friendly, sharp. Yes, sharp.

Many of the others have left, and for a short while we were back to two really good people. For awhile they brought on this incredibly dark and nasty, rude and creepy woman who must have been a real joy for everyone to work with. After about 1-2 months she moved out, and then they brought another lady in. She was very good, but before any of us customers got too comfortable with having 3 great postal workers again, they moved her out and brought the slow one in.

My first encounter with ‘tso’ was when I needed to mail a package and she told me it would be almost $8 to ship. I told her to ship it First Class because it was light enough to do so. She gave me this dull, empty look and said, ‘What makes you think you can ship it like that?!!!” Fortunately, before she could refuse my request, the guy in the next station had to stop what he was doing, come over and show her how to use the system so it would bring up all the shipping options, not just what she keyed in. For an experienced postal worker, not knowing how to do this seemed rather alarming. And the item shipped for under $3.00

Yesterday I brought in a package to be mailed, and somehow I forgot to put the zipcode on the label. Unfortunately she was the window that I ended up at. She stared at the package and shoved it back to me and flat out said, “I can’t do anything with this, there’s no zipcode, bring it back when you have one.” since I was at the Post Office, duh, I asked her if she could look it up. “NO, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT. I DON’T HAVE A WAY TO DO THAT.” Okay, maybe it’s just me, but doesn’t it seem a little ridiculous that the Post Office refuses to look up a zipcode for an address for a customer? And then they wonder why their revenues have taken a drop, ay yai yai.

Fortunately she had to go in the back for something, and one of the two conscientious employees there had an open window, so I asked him if there’s a way to get a zipcode. He looked it up for me and wrote it on the package, and I ended up finishing the transactions with him. Nothing makes you appreciate a helpful, conscientious, good worker even more than dealing with someone who clearly does not want to do anything that is touching the bare minimum of her job.

As maddening as it is from the consumer side, during the busy times at this station, I’m sure the other two regulars are less than thrilled to have to carry someone who really doesn’t seem to even want to be there. In this job market, this type of attitude and the ability for someone to be gainfully employed with this type of attitude seems like it should be a relic of a different day. If this were a private enterprise, I’d say give raises to the other two.

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civil, concientious, dry goods, employees, montrose, poor, service, USPS
September 19th, 2009
post by tamalechica | | 3

The US Mail sometimes just doesn’t deliver

My regular mail person is pretty decent.  My mailman before her could walk on water.  And then there are the substitutes.  Some of them are incredible, given they don’t really know the names or the route.  And then there are the substitutes from Hell. 

Earlier this year, my physician sent me some legal documents I needed to file.  Her office attended to this immediately because the papers were time sensitive.  After a week, I contacted them.  The document had gone out 8 days ago.  They reissued the paperwork.  Another week went by.  Their office never received any returns, and I never received the original paperwork they sent out.  The deadline loomed.  They issued it again.  I was two days short of being past the deadline, when out of desperation, I asked a friend to pick it up.  She pony expressed it with her car the next day.  I hit the post office that afternoon, making the deadline by one day.  The 3rd try by my doctor’s office arrived a week after the deadline had passed.

I live in one of the “better” zipcodes but when there’s a bad sub, the delivery service is beyond substandard.  This is in sharp contrast to some of the really concientious subs, who ring my bell when there’s a package.  But I digress. 

My landlord told me about the time that one of the utility companies called him to find out where he moved the building to, since the bills for the building were stamped, “moved, left no forwarding address.”  So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that getting my old medical records from one of my dentists is turning into something approaching the scaling of the Patagonias with both hands tied behind one’s back. 

When I used to have my bank hold my bank statements, once they told me they hadn’t received them for any of their customers.  Three months later they all showed up.  The problem was that a bad sub had dumped the entire bag of mail and left it in the hallway of some office building, and it stayed there until someone finally called the Post Office.

Several weeks ago my old dentist’s office prepared a package of my records per my request.  A week later I received a call that the entire package came back as:  “Undeliverable” because no such person lived there.  Well, since I’ve lived here a very long time, we know that’s a bunch of bullcream.  The office gal repackaged it, and sent it off.  Last week I received another call.  The newly packaged file came back again, “Addressee Unknown.”  She read the package details to me – everything was correct.

It’s now been about a week, and if I don’t receive it by Monday, I will need to ask someone who works in the area to pick it up for me, or I’ll have to clear my schedule and waste half a day going down to their office to do the work that the Post Office seems unable to do.  If I was a betting type of person, I should probably just ask a friend to pick it up for me…

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delivery, mail, problems, USPS
August 24th, 2009
post by tamalechica | | Closed

Coming to a Post Office Station Near You?

On August 4, 2009 the Chicago Sun Times published an article that there are 24 locations in Chicago that the US Post Office is considering closing, citing an overall decline in mail volume.

One of those locations is at 2011 W. Montrose. From a business perspective, it makes me wonder just how they base their choices in terms of present versus future growth and providing a service location. This location is easily accessible by the Montrose and Damen bus lines. The Montrose bus also swings by the Wilson (aka Crusty) Red Line Station. The Montrose location is also walkable from the Brown Line Montrose Station. Accessibility to and from public transportation is a big plus for any business, but obviously not a major criteria, or at least not one weighty enough to keep them off the possible closure list.

One of the things about the 2011 W. Montrose station is that the regulars who work there are (yes, I am talking USPS) efficient, careful, friendly and conscientious. Any of their regular customers would know this and rue any decision to close this station, sending customers to the Lawrence Avenue station (bring a book) or the Uptown location (bring a much longer book). This would also assume that one drives.

Case in point: One year I somehow got stuck in that pre-Christmas line, which would be painfully long and slow moving in almost any shipping location. Someone who clearly was new to this location started carping, throwing out his negative, vitriolic vibes and muttering about lousy post office service. Several people looked at him and told him, “this place is pretty good,” and he shut-up. He may have shut-up out of shock, since I was once talking to my uncle who was telling me about his normal painful experiences at the Post Office station he goes to, which by the way, was NOT on this list.

As a reminder of the normative service level, when two of the three regular employees went on vacation, it took one of the employees, who called in, to tell them that they need to send another person. At that time, the line was completely surrounding the perimeter of the post office, which grew longer due to E-Bay sellers who brought boxes of items that each needed to be weighted and stamped. Well, they sent one substitute. In the past the substitutes have included a really nasty younger woman who could have easily been the poster woman for “I just got out of prison for mass murder” but fortunately they sent someone less angry and pissed off. They sent the “I’m not really here to serve you” lady.

You know the archetype. I brought in a small padded envelope. She wanted to charge me for either parcel or priority. Fortunately the regular employees at this station always bring up all options and point out the least costly. It is because of this that I had started to use the USPS to ship almost everything. Apparently that was not the way this lady worked. She told me it would be $4.90 to ship it priority, “do I want delivery confirmation?” I said, “I’d like it to ship First Class.” (It was under 16 oz). She looked at me like I was smoking old postage stamps. Fortunately the regular guy there leaned over, and told her to hit a different sequence of keys to bring up the other options. Como es magico. Like magic, I sent the item for $1.90.

Lately the USPS has taken to sending their parcel delivery trucks out to deliver in our neighborhood. In the past, they delivered mostly large, very heavy packages. Recently they’ve shown up delivering small boxes the size of what would have fit a VCR tape. Call me overly analytical, but wouldn’t the cost per delivery package of something that small and light end up a lot higher than the actual postage paid? Are the business analysts looking at service functions and earnings per function, versus just trying to close stations to save on overhead?

From the consumer side, since the 2011 Montrose station opened up, I’ve sent more packages via USPS versus UPS, due to the USPS being more economical and the location of this station is, albeit a long walk, still walkable. What will I do if this station closes? Since I don’t have a car, taking one or two busses while carrying a bunch of boxes really isn’t all that appealing, plus the lost time, so I will be shipping UPS. I am sure many others will do so as well. By making access less convenient and less accessible (time and location), why would anyone want to give them more business?

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2011 W. Montose, closures, retail sites, USPS

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