Oh, for the love of God!

[gridlore]

Sitting here, listing to Metallica and reading mail, when the doorbell rings. Not expecting anyone, I use the intercom. I distinctly hear a woman's voice say "Douglas?"

I buzz her in and meet her in the hallway. Very pleasant Indian woman, about 50 I'd guess. And she's holding my disability check. She lives at the same address on 15th Avenue, and had the check delivered there three days ago. She took it to the Post Offal, explained the error, gave it back.. and it comes back the next day! So she hand carried it down here to deliver it herself.

After thanking her profusely, I began to steam. My address is clearly *typed* on the check. There is no way to mistake that 9 for a 5. Once, I can understand. But twice? Come Tuesday, Hurricane Penguin is hitting the Post Office and registering several complaints!

Comments

an explaination: same number, different street

[shadopanther.livejournal.com]

We had the same problem periodically at my mother's place. Same street number, different street. Our Piedmont Rd. mail was occasionally delivered at the same street number on Shaffer St. and vice versa.

I talked to the mail carrier about this once (who happened to be a co-worker of mine at his second job at a hardware store). He explained that when people are sorting the mail into the different outgoing boxes, the one for [####] Shaffer was right below (or next to) the box for [####] Piedmont. Thus, if the sorter was in a hurry, they might accidentally put it into the wrong box. Right #, wrong street.

Of course, the other half of this is the responsibility of the mail carrier to catch mistakes before delivery, as opposed to just shoving the clump of mail that's been bundled for X address into their mailbox. The mail carrier who was also a co-worker of mine made sure to check when he had our route. Some of the other mail carriers that sometimes had our route did not -- and that was when the erroneous Shaffer mail would show up.

My hypothesis is that the same thing happened with your check getting delivered to the nice Indian lady's address. Shame on the post office for making the sorting error twice in a row! It is a good thing that you have such a nice neighbor on 15th street that she hand delivered it rather than sending it back to the post office again or putting it out for "return to sender". ....Her hand delivery of your check also makes your happening to be home a very good thing!

I am glad for you that your disability check found its way to you, and I wish you good postal luck at the Post Office on Tuesday.

-- Shadopanther

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

Is there a barcode on the bottom of the envelope, under the address? If there is, it has the wrong address coded on it. We have that problem occasionally, and if we don't scratch out the barcode, it always comes back to us. The sorting machine only looks at the barcode, and a lot of carriers only look at the numbers.