I typically receive X pieces of misdelivered (postal) mail ...
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I typically receive X pieces of misdelivered (postal) mail ...
0
Percentage of others that also voted for:
More than 150? Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not even sure I receive that many pieces of mail per year in total.
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
>150 is indicative of living at the wrong house.
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Or having an ex-wife who hates you, and thinks that putting your address on every free give away and mailing list she can get her little passive aggressive hands on between trips to the liquor store is the best way to show her displeasure with getting the shitty divorce attorney, that was some how my fault....
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The thing is though, that's not misdelivered. It might be unwanted, but the company company sending the materials and the post office are acting in accordance with the information they have been provided.
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
Although I concede your point, you've managed to completely remove any humor from my post, that may or may not have been there. I never said she put my or her name on it. For the first few hundred letters to people at your address that you've never heard of you assume it's all sort of some mistake. Then after explaining to the postal carrier that you don't actually in-fact live on a commune nor have more than a passing interest in BDSM; you begin to suspect foul play... You wait for the slip up... for days or weeks or months... someone somewhere is going to ask you about your mail... Then SHE does, and it's ON! You spend your time in the dark hours of the night subscribing her address to news letters most likely watched by DHS or the ATF. Contemplating that maximum amount of hassle you can cause w/o going to jail or breaking a law...
Any who..... In the real world I don't really get any misdelivered mail...
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is when you get a P.O. Box for all important mail like bills, etc. Then after awhile when you know only unwanted mail is coming to your regular mail -- do mail forwarding or Change of Address to have USPS automatically send all of it to your ex ;)
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:5, Funny)
I like the cut of your jib!
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Funny and all, but change of address only works for First Class mail. And you'd be amazed at how little junk mail is 1st class.
Since the US post office is looking for ways to save/make money I offer this:
I would be interested in paying the US Post office to only deliver First Class mail and to automatically destroy all the other stuff.
Or how about this: They could hold auctions. If the junk mailer can outbid me they get to deliver the junk. If I outbid them, I don't see it. Either way the post office wins.
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I like the beginning of your idea..
If they make $5/yr on the delivered junk mail that you receive, $6.00 should make sure you *don't* receive it.
The USPS can already quantify bulk mailings to your zipcode. It's a simple matter to pay for your address to be excluded.
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It's still misdelivered. It's just not the fault of the Postal Service.
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>150 is indicative of living at the wrong house.
Where I live, it could mean you live at the city hall.
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Or a letter carrier that consistently delivers the mail in the wrong order in the housing complex.
I can count on my neighbors getting seven out of ten of my packages, and vice versa.
Fortunately we get along and have no major squabbles so we more or less resort the mail four days a week.
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Or you know... anywhere relatively populated.
"At the wrong house" covers that, I think.
Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
Live in an apartment complex where there is a lot of turnover. I have done so for years and every day or two I get two or more pieces of mail that, while addressed to the correct *address* (my apartment), are not for me, but for the tenant who lived here last year (or maybe last decade, to judge by the large number of names on the various pieces of mail).
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We rented the family house to some friends while I lived out of town. This was 12 years ago or so now.
I still get 1-2 pieces of mail addressed to them per year. The address is still floating around some mailing lists (probably the purchased variety).
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I get mail addressed to my father, my sister, and my brother, none of whom have never lived at my address.
Well, that's not never been correct then, hasn't it not?
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Lucky you.
My landlord gets tons of mail at my address. I have to collect them up and give them to him occasionally. I initially put that and he freaked out. I really like the place otherwise and would like him to renew the lease next year, so I comply. Ugh. //I think he's claiming residence on the place probably.
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Why not make it easy on yourself, and just throw it all in the trash?
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Well, If the Guy is claiming residence. He KNOWS stuff is being delivered there...
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In that case a rent reduction may be in order in exchange for that bit of information not somehow making its way to the IRS...
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Move to a short term apartment.
I get mail for the previous 4 tenants. one of whom lived for in that location for 3 years. Junk mail people never update their databases.
fortunately I get 90% of my mail electronically. bills, etc are sent by email so when i move I don't have to update them immediately.
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I have marked the mail as moved and still get 2 or 3 pieces a month for her. Just too annoy me further it is from religious and "Focus on the Family" groups.
The only thing that keeps me from completely snapping is knowing that such groups are wasting money each month to send mail that "Marilyn Brantford" will never read.
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In a similar vein, I've started getting more and more threatening voicemail messages (since I rarely answer my landline) from various collection agencies looking for the previous holder of my phone number. Actually, yesterday it was the IRS with a reference number for her "case" - if they ever do track her down I'm guessing it won't be pretty.
My girlfriend made the mistake of answering one of those calls and basically had to hang up on the caller after they refused to believe her name wasn't "Sarah". In f
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I'm not even sure I receive that many pieces of mail per year in total.
Even worse, look at the distribution. Much better would be 0, 1-2, 3-5, 5-10, 10-20, 20-50, cmdrtaco
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Don't forget 0-1. I've only had one wrong piece of mail in the last 4 years. So I get 0.25 pieces of wrong mail a year.
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Re:More than 150? Seriously? (Score:4, Funny)
Next-door neighbors (Score:2)
Re:Next-door neighbors (Score:5, Interesting)
I once got misdelivered mail that was destined for somewhere about 1,000 miles and about 5 states away. I had never considered that the envelopes stuck together, which might explain it, though they were not stuck together when I got them. I was very puzzled since there were no similarities in street name, address, city, state, zip code, etc...
On the flip side of this poll, I'm always impressed when the post office correctly delivers mis-addressed mail. I currently live in a large complex with several hundred units, and mailboxes spread throughout (about one group of mailboxes outside of every 4 units, and no labels with occupant names). Sometimes either we forget the unit number, or somebody's software chops it off when printing the address. Yet the mailman has figured out the correct unit and put it in my mailbox. Even when it's addressed to my wife's maiden name, and there are no other pieces of mail with that name.
The USPS isn't anywhere near perfect (I'm usually disappointed by their package redelivery in my area, for example), but there are many employees that take their jobs seriously and do a fantastic job - and to them, I say kudos. And I hope their enthusiasm about their jobs spreads to more employees...
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Small towns are even more impressive. I can send stuff to my family members with nothing but a name, city, state, and zip and be confident it will get there. Granted, it's only a town of 1000 people, but I've always found it impressive the few times it's happened.
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That's actually illegal. My grandmother used to be a postal employee in a VERY small town (~300 people) and she used to get in trouble for putting people's mail in their boxes if they had the wrong address on them. Apparently even if you know that John Smith lives at 101 Main St, and not 103 Main St, if the letter says 103, you gotta put it in 103.
Re:Next-door neighbors (Score:5, Insightful)
Rules over common sense. This is why we can't have nice things.
Re:Next-door neighbors (Score:5, Funny)
Wood
John
Mass.
"John Underwood, Andover, Mass."
Probably wouldn't work nowadays. Probably get opened as a terrorist threat or something.
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Agree. The postal service is a steal at it's price, and has an exceedingly high rate of success in properly delivering mail.
My parents live in one of the boroughs of New York City. They moved a few miles. Their mail got forwarded for the requisite 6 months and they changed all the addresses as good folks do.
Forward 20 years. They go away on a trip and decide to stop their mail when they are gone. When they go to the postal office to pick up their mail, the lady at the desk asks them to wait for the loc
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Years ago, a friend of my tried an experiment. First he mailed a letter to me, properly addressed, and had me call when it arrived. Then he sent another letter with just my last name, street (no building or apartment number) and zip code. They both took the same time to get to me, and the same results were had with his other participants. Across town, same state, cross country, it didn't matter.
For all its faults, the USPS does (and has always done) an overall terrific job. And for pennies.
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But I love dead trees! Most of my furniture is dead trees and I'm not personally trucking my new table to my residence thank you very much.
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I live on Maple Drive.
For a second, I thought your postman was delivering mail using Apple Maps driving directions. That could explain a lot.
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The way my luck would work would be the one time the busty, hot, horny pizza girl actually fulfilled the porn fantasy she's go to the wrong house (222 Whatever Drive instead of 222 Whatever Lane). I can never have good luck or nice things happen.
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And you should become a delivery guy, they have more luck.
depends.... (Score:2)
is it still considered misdelivered if it has my correct name and address on it?
somehow I landed a subscription to Country Woman, GQ, and Black Enterprise, without ever remembering how I got signed up for them.
I'd love to see the marketing drones trying to analyze my household's demographic based on that.
My neighbor made a mess of it (Score:2)
My neighbor has a jack assed house number. He is on the even side of the street and has created his own odd number. It is out of order and somehow between my next door neighbor and myself, even though he is down the block a few houses. Its ridiculous. So i get his mail. i open it at will and throw large portions of it away. Important stuff i deliver to him. When he first built his house, it was many pieces a day. Now it's probably 5-10 pieces a week. i can always tell when the normal delivery guy i
Re:My neighbor made a mess of it (Score:4, Interesting)
As far as I know, it's illegal to open someone else's mail, maybe even a federal offence in some countries.
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As far as I know, it's illegal to open someone else's mail, maybe even a federal offence in some countries.
Apparently, in the United States, only if you steal it first. [ehow.com] If it comes to you and you open it, possession being nine points of the law and all...
What is the point of this? (Score:2)
Just wondering. Is there any point to these surveys? I mean, next one will be: "How much lint to you currently have in your belly button? A) none, B) just a bit C) a big clump ... "
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You wish! It's only a nickel.
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D) Cowboy Neal?
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Just wondering. Is there any point to these surveys? I mean, next one will be: "How much lint to you currently have in your belly button? A) none, B) just a bit C) a big clump ... "
The point, assuming there is one, might be found in the following list of cookies on three key pages at Slashdot:
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Just wondering. Is there any point to these surveys? I mean, next one will be: "How much lint to you currently have in your belly button? A) none, B) just a bit C) a big clump ... "
I'm waiting for the ear wax, nose hair and masturbation polls, then I know the apocalypse is upon us and /. has finally gone off the deep end.
The surveys, although sometimes inane in the past, have gone completely off the rails and have been taken over by folks far less clever than their predecessors. $0.02
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The polls are obviously crucial market research being conducted by Dice.com in order to formulate their next marketing campaign.
Guess they should read their own disclaimers at the bottom of the survey, like
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
Old tenants (Score:2)
We've lived in our current place for about 3 years now, and we still get at least 1 piece of mail each month for old tenants who rented our place before us!
We've gotten everything from drivers license renewal notices, vehicle registration notices, taxation letters (Australian Tax Office), voting enrollment notices, even had debt collection letters and for a few weeks even phone calls from debt collectors! (They stopped once we advised the debt collector that the old person no longer lives at the address, we
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Most of the mis-delivered mail I receive is also meant for the previous owners of my house. They ran a towing company, and the bulk of their mail is addressed to that. Why a towing company would want to subscribe to Comcast, I don't know, but Comcast keeps sending them flyers.
I occasionally get mail for the people who owned the house before them, which puts it back 10 years or so.
LOTS.... (Score:2)
... because the guy who developed my neighborhood was FUCKING STUPID. Within 1/4 mile of my house are two others with the same 4-digit number (yeah, because you need 4-digit house numbers -- ALL in the 1500-3500 range -- in a 480-house subdivision), and one of those two is on a street with a name similar to mine: both are 8 letters, and both start with the same 3 letters. GENIUS.
What Is This "Mail" That You Speak Of? (Score:2)
It's been years since I received an actual letter from anyone, and aside from my mother, an actual birthday card.
Seriously?? (Score:2)
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Potentially anyone who rents. On average, I receive about one or two misdelivered letters per day. That's right, per day. It's mostly what I would consider junk mail, though its addressed to specific people who used to live here not just "Current Resident". The worst, though, is the mail for an old lady who used to live here a few tenants back. I can guess at her age due to the frequency of AARP materials sent to her (to say nothing of her apparent reliance on snail mail). But in addition to this, there are
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If it's got the correct address, then it's not exactly misdelivered, now, is it?
"Return to sender" isn't an informative thing to write on stuff that made it to the right address. What you want to write is "Not at this address". I've found that to be very effective.
Case of Ammo (Score:2)
Vacation periods (Score:2)
Ex Wives (Score:2)
I received received some junk mail for my first wife who I divorced in 97 when I lived in Virginia. I'm not sure she even knows my Colorado address. I occasionally get a junk letter for my oldest daughter as well.
Otherwise I'll get 1 or 2 a year meant for a misread street or missed by a house or two house number.
[John]
Been at my house for 13 years... (Score:2)
And I still get occasional letters for the previous owners. I used to write on them "return to sender" but after a few years I stopped. Most of the post is advertising and brochures, so I now read them. Some are interesting since he was an electrical contractor.
Occasionally I get letters from collections agencies for random people who I have no idea if they ever lived in the house!
It doen't bother me though.
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They use illegal autodialers, and always leave messages on my machine telling m
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hey use illegal autodialers, and always leave messages on my machine telling me that by listening to the message I acknowledge that I am some other person that I am not.
Never heard of a phone EULA or what ever you could call that. I haven't gotten that but I still regularly get phone calls for collectors who insist someone who does not live at my house owes them money. If one of them happens to call when I am at home asking for $SomeRandomPerson I have taken to telling that they died. I figure that if the collection company is so incompetent in tracking down the person that a little additional bad info won't hurt.
"Not at this address" works better. (Score:2)
There are all kinds of reasons why someone might write "return to sender" on something. I've found it far more effective to write "not at this address" on mail that's come to the right address but the wrong person.
At home or at work? (Score:2)
At home, I probably get 0-3 pieces of mail per year addressed to the person who used to live here. I'm not sure if that counts as misdelivered or not since it's addressed to my address. However, at work, I get an average of at least one a week addressed to one of the other businesses in our building. We're in Suite B, and it's like the mail carrier is just too damn lazy to open the mailbox for Suite A that's six inches away from ours. That doesn't include the mail sent to our address for prior tenants o
define misdelivered (Score:2)
Misdelivered is not very well defined. Here are my stats:
1) Mail addressed to my next door neighbor (once or twice a year)
2) Mail addressed correctly but with a previous owner's name. (once or twice a month)
3) Actual misdelivered mail addressed to someone more than a block away (once or twice total in my lifetime)
#2 is obviously the most frequent but I don't necessarily consider that misdelivered as it arrived at
the correct house but not necessarily the correct person.
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I disagree. Misdelivered means it was incorrectly delivered. If the letter has an address on it and it
arrives in the correct mailbox, it was correctly delivered. The fact that the person is deceased, has
moved, etc... is not really the mail carrier's problem. It was still correctly delivered to the address
specified on the letter. Also alot of times the mail I get say it's to "random person X or current resident"
so by your definition is it still considered misdelivered?
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How is it misdelivered? For years I've used different names for various subscriptions, so I can track who is selling my name, and to whom. If the PO refused to deliver mail just because they didn't recognize the name, I wouldn't have been able to do that. As far as I'm concerned, if it's got my address, it should end up in my mailbox. If it's not one of the names I use, I can always write "not at this address" on it, and send it back, but it was certainly not misdelivered. It went exactly where it was suppo
Never (Score:2)
Decimals (Score:2)
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2 people in my building with the same name (Score:2)
We have a lovely old lady living on the top floor, Mrs. Lundqvist. On the 2nd floor, we have a younger couple, Mr. & Mrs. Lundqvist... as I help the old Mrs. Lundqvist with managing her personal finances, I quite often end up acting as a local postman delivering letters to the correct Lundqvist.
It got problematic a couple of years ago - the Lundqvists downstairs got into debt, and ended up with debt collectors coming around to serve collection orders, yet they consistently ended up banging on the wrong
ob. (Score:2)
Cowboy Neal delivers my mail
If In Electronic Form, Far Far More (Score:2)
Add one or two zeroes to the end of these counts.
We also received a misdelivered cake (Score:2)
Canada Post can't read some days... (Score:2)
To add a positive note (Score:2)
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Bill Bryson relates some other impressive efforts by the USPS in tracking down addresses. For example, this address:
HILL
JOHN
MASS
which was correctly delivered to John Underhill, Andover Mass. (get it?)
And also a letter he received with this address:
Bill Bryson, author
lives somewhere in New Hampshire, America
Hundreds (Score:2)
Personal mail not so much, maybe 10-20 a year (which is still annoying as I have lived at my house for like 8 years now, but I am getting mail for two different people who haven't lived there in 10+ years)...
However I also through work send out a big mailing process to thousands of clients. It clearly states where to return the forms in the letter, which no one reads (which varies depending on where you live, which is why I can't just use that as the return address). A ton of clients simply return it to the
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"Return to sender" only requires to strike your own address and write "return to sender" on the letter. Takes about ten seconds and no stamp is required.
Lived in the same place for 20 years ... (Score:2)
ex-husband (Score:2)
More importantly, how many items never received? (Score:2)
Very little problem with receiving someone else's mail, so I voted 1-10. Closer to the 1 end of the scale.
But, a bigger problem is items mailed to me that never arrived.
Historically, that number has been zero. But in the last month, I have had three separate items that were sent but never showed up. Mailed about a week apart, from three different senders. Percentage-wise, three missing items is plenty, as my (junk-mail-adjusted) received mail volume probably only amounts to about 10 items per month.
Wedding down the street (Score:2)
A neighbor down the street is apparently being wed because we get their wedding RSVPs. The RSVP postcards are in a fancy script and the Post Office routinely misinterprets a "1" for a "4". This has definitely made this year's count spike.
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A neighbor down the street is apparently being wed because we get their wedding RSVPs. The RSVP postcards are in a fancy script and the Post Office routinely misinterprets a "1" for a "4". This has definitely made this year's count spike.
Or the printer misprinted the 1 with a 4. Or the script designer did a bad job.
Yep, 150+ (Score:2)
I used to get TONS of wrong mail (Score:2)
But, for the previous residents of my house. They must have been some interesting characters. Lots of collections stuff continued to arrive and some total information awareness database finally associated my home phone number with the address as well, so I was getting upwards of 5 calls a day from collections agencies for them. And, they were complete dicks when I'd tell them they had the wrong phone number and address. At one point, my CELL phone number started getting calls for them, but that only hap
Want A Mitt Romney Poster? (Score:2)
My father passed away three years ago. Apparently he had been donating money to various Republican causes (why I have no idea, he was a Federal employee all his life and was living on a generous Federal pension).
Well these guys apparently don't check the dead person list. Ever. Since I was executor of his estate I got ALL of the Republican mail. I'd write on it stuff like 'return to sender, addressee deceased'. Made no difference.
I'm more or less an independent. But now I cringe every time I get Republican
Resident (Score:2)
I get 3-4 pieces of mail per week addressed to
Resident
(but the number and street etc are correct)
We have never had any 'resident's living here.
My Father-in-law is now a resident at the veterans home.
(I work at a long term elderly care facility that has about 100 residents)
Not mis-delivered (Score:2)
Programmers should know better, most of what is discussed in this thread is 'mis-addressed' not 'mis-delivered', as far as I'm concerned mis-delivered is when something gets delivered to an address that is not on the post.
Post going to the address written on it = correctly delivered.
Useful... (Score:2)
This [google.com] and this [google.com] look handy for your unwanted mail needs, or the guy on every ex-gf's/ex-wife's list for junk mail.
The unexpected (Score:2)
Misdelivered mail has led to two at least somewhat humorous, and oddly related, incidents in my life.
Back in college I subscribed to several IEEE journals. The journals were shipped wrapped in a plain brown wrapper. On one occasion a journal was misdelivered to another college student a few apartments down. The next day he hand delivered it to my apartment, with the wrapper missing, and the comment "That was so not what I thought it would be, dude." You see, adult magazines were usually wrapped in the s
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