Post Office VENT

dldelano

OK so I have to let it out to someone who understands...

I am working this week, and though my fiance is not, he is sick. However, he still volunteered to go to the post office for me yesterday and stand in line for over an hour to ask them to hand cancel our Save the Dates.

And lo and behold, I get home today and 20% of them were MAILED TO ME, have clearly been put through a machine and are outright trashed. When they were put in the machine, the machine read the back of the envelope and assumed my address was the receiver, ripping the flap in the process.

I am livid. I do not have extra envelopes for the Save the Dates. I wasted zazzle postage. And my poor sick FI wasted his time and sacrificed his health. I am so pissed.

I'd like to say venting helps but I'm still ticked. Look out if the other 80% come in the mail tomorrow.

Will the post office repent for this huge mistake or will I get a "too bad so sad" government response?


Darcy

fairy_diva

I would show up at the PO bright and early, even if I had togo into work late amd trust me they would fix it at their cost! 
About 7 years ago the post office decided to forward all my mail to my brothers address.  He had been living with me and when he and his new wife bought their home he forwarded their names, about a week later we realized the PO also forwarded me too. That was bad enough but I spent the next year fixing it, each time I would fix an address their system would automatically return it.  The worst was my student loans, since they were under the Federal Direct Loan consolidation, the USPS was changing my address every time back to the forwarded one. My last trip to the PO fixed it once and for all, after I had to show a not so plesant side and threat to sue them for any and all late charges and hardship.

janedoe1113a

It's going to be a pain in the ass to get it fixed, but if you fight hard enough, they'll fix it.

squirrly

Call in to work, and camp out at the post office.  Figure out before you go in the cost to replace/redo, though.

kristinanddan

Just so you know, even if you hand cancel an envelope, it still goes through a number of machines on its journey. There is no way to avoid all of them.

dldelano

Well I went in this morning when they opened at 8am. Of course, a manager arrives at 9am so I could not talk to that person. But we established that whomever my fiance talked to failed at their job by not telling him that they do not hand cancel "at this location" because if that had happened he obviously would not have left them there. He "should" have been told to take them "downtown" instead which to me just sounds like "not my problem - go away".

And I've wasted all the custom stamps because even though the machine read and stamped the BACK (which is why they were all mailed back to me) I cannot reaffix those stampes to new, non-ripped, non-trashed, non-smeared envelopes.

This is infuriating. I'm glad I wasted all this effort.
Off to go buy replacement envelopes...thanks for the support!

sarahbethfurlong

This might be a silly question, but your post got me worried because I'm going to mail my STDs this week, too.  Why did you need to get them hand-cancelled?  What does this mean? TIA!

duckie1905

Honestly, I have a friend that used to work for a post office.  Hand canceling, in theory, cuts down the amount of times something goes through a sorting machine.  Occasionally it is required because something may be too thick or ridgid, but it is almost never required.

It is a really hit or miss service.  Many post offices will tell you they do it and then don't (trust me, it happened a lot at my friend's branch) or, they have the service available but it is such a PITA for the clerk that they tell you they won't do it.

And no matter what, it will always go through machines. Hand canceling just reduces the number of times it does.  We didn't do it with ours (as they were pretty standard size and weight and type) and because I think that with the inconsistences in post office clerks, what they'll do, and the rules, it wasn't wroth the time or effort.

tlv204

I thought the reason some people did hand cancelling was to avoid silly stamps that the machine puts over the postage stamp? I know one of DH's cousins did this because at the time they were using a shrek stamp

I hear so many problems about it though that I can't imagine it's worth the effort. I've also heard of people being charged extra for hand cancelling. Everything I've heard about hand cancelling has been a nightmare, I don't think I've ever met someone who didn't have problems with it.

Now someone who didn't have problems needs to come tell me about it!

cjohnsen2010

I was at the main post office in Tampa last week and asked if I could stand at the counter (to the side, which I have done before at another post office) and hand cancel my envelopes.  The man said no, they take them in the back to do them.  Sure.

Unfortunately, the lady who let me do it before at another post office is no longer there.

I had read on here before that other brides had the same problem with returned invitations when they used wraparound labels.  Is that what you used?