MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
It should come to your residential address. There are probably millions of people who run businesses from their home address and it's no issue as far as I know to receive mail at a residential address for a business. If you were concerned about this, you could put a visible note inside or on your mailbox with the name of your company or saying "accepting mail for (insert name of company) so that there is no confusion to your letter carrier. There really shouldn't be any confusion. I just deliver the mail by address and if the recipient or company name is incorrect they could leave the mail out for me to have it returned to the sender.
If you have received incorrect mail in your PO Box, you can do a few things. You can write on the envelope, "addressee unknown" and push it back through the PO Box so it lands on the floor or leave it in an outgoing mail collection box. Either way, the PO Box clerk should see that it doesn't belong to you after you have written on it and either forward it or return it to the sender. You could probably also keep the mail but that may not be ethical especially if it was important mail. I'm sure many PO Boxes get closed and the renter doesn't leave forwarding instructions.
I guess that's okay if the lady in the apt. office has access to the mailboxes. Some buildings and apt. complexes have different procedures about who delivers the mail. I don't know how that is determined. Where I deliver mail, any multi-unit building or complex has the mail delivered to each unit by a USPS employee. The building or apt. complex staff has no access to the cluster boxes. I can see how this differs because we generally don't deliver mail on university campuses to each students mailbox. The same would go for an extended stay hotel or long-term care facility. I just hope you haven't had delivery issues with receiving your mail from the lady who puts it into your box. This would be unfortunate because if you complained to the USPS about this, they may say ask the lady in the apt. office who may or may not be easy to deal with. Thank you for your question.
Your mail shouldn't be returned because you don't pick it up daily. I've never heard of any obligation one has to pick up their mail at any specific interval. If the mailbox fills up, I know mail can be returned but I'm not sure if that means the overflow mail or the mail in the box already. In my experience it's very common for mail to be left in the mailbox for days. It doesn't bother me one bit and it's rare that the mailbox gets so full that action must be taken. Without knowing any further details, it sounds like your letter carrier is being a jerk and looking for conflict rather than providing quality service.
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I sign customer's names on accountable mail or packages that need a signature if I know them and they'd likely want that done. I frequently do this but technically it's not allowed unless the recipient has given previous written authorization to do this. So far, it's never been a problem in my career that I've signed for an item, but I don't expect others to do the same. As far as if this can screw over a customer, I don't know. I suppose if you signed for a package for a customer and then never delivered it to them it could be a problem. I think in that case the letter carrier would be questioned because the intended recipient never received the item and will say it's not their signature on the PS 3849 or electronic signature record.
Yes, stamps are required. I believe what is printed in the upper right hand corner of the postcard is known as an indicia. That is to indicate to the USPS has been paid for the postage but only after being brought to. Business Mail Entry Unit (a BMEU). In that case no additional postage is required. To answer your question you aren't using EDDM so after you affix the address label, you would need to put a .49 Forever stamp on each card since I believe the card exceeds the dimensions for a .35 postcard. I believe I'm correct about all of this but it wouldn't hurt to physically go into a Post Office and see if any of the retail clerks or supervisors can give you a more definitive answer. Good luck with the mailing and your business.
In theory each postal route (which is usually made up of one letter carrier) should be the amount of work (sorting and delivering the mail/parcels) for 8 hrs of work per day. In reality this amt varies depending on the time of year (December being the heaviest package season so it usually takes longer to complete a route, summer not so much). There aren't adjustments made too frequently to the size of a postal route but it could happen if a route was way out of whack to being able to be finished in 8 hours. There is a route adjustment procedure that takes place where the volume of mail is counted plus the amount of time it takes to deliver a route. To answer your question though, I don't know of an actually limit in the amt of mail to be given each day to a letter carrier.
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