The Inevitable Coming Death of the United States Postal Service

My daughter wanted to ship a small birthday gift to an old friend of hers who now lives in Oregon.  We used one of the fixed-rate boxes that I had picked up previously for free at the post office.  The smallest box is about the size of a VHS video cassette (or the box your iPod came in, if you're under 20 years old...) and they'll ship it anywhere in the US by priority mail for $4.95.  I took it over to the post office at 10:30 Sunday night, knowing that they had an "Automated Postal Center," or APC, where I could pay for the postage.  I entered all the information, swiped my credit card, and it printed out this postage label for the package:

So, obviously, the printer was broken, and that label wasn't going to get me anywhere.  No problem, I had brought stamps with me, just in case, and I stuck down eleven 44 cent stamps, one 10 cent, and one 1 cent, and then dropped the box in the parcel drop next to the APC.  Two days later, it arrived back at our house.  The postal service had bounced it to the return address because, at 14 ounces, it exceeded the 13 ounce limit for mailing packages without going to the counter.  This policy was originally a response to the Unabomber (who was captured in 1996) and now it is part of the general air of paranoia that pervades "our Post-9/11 world(tm)".  (I wonder if there is a study somewhere showing that 13 ounces was a magic threshold weight for lethal letter-bombs.  That would have been a fun research project to work on...)

Today, thinking I would kill two birds with one stone, I took my lunch hour at work to go to the post office near my employer, to re-mail the package, and get a refund on my defectively printed $4.95 label.  Well, one out of two isn't bad... (YES, IT REALLY IS!)  The lady at the counter took the package, took off the warning labels they'd returned it to me with, and put it in the outgoing.  She then said that, no, I couldn't get a refund on the defective label, I would have to go to the post office where I purchsed it.  I politely pointed out that I'm not NEAR that post office during business hours, which is why I used the APC in the first place.  She checked with her manager, and no, they just couldn't help.  Apparently if THEY refunded the money, that post office would have to eat the cost, because there is no way for them to recover the money from the post office where I bought the defective label.

Okay, savor the irony of this for a moment.  This organization exists (at great taxpayer subsidized expense, these last few years), for the purpose of supporting communications.  And yet individual post offices are, apparently, run as rival factions with no means for transferring money from one to another.  I pointed out that this was stupid.  The counter lady agreed.  And apologized.  And suggested that I call the 800-275-8777 customer service number.

Knowing at this point that I was going to write this entry, I figured "why not?"  Back at the office I called the customer support line, and they really don't make it easy to get to a human if you don't fall into one of the four available voice menu categories. But I eventually got a human.  And she found in her information (to her surprise as well) that "the ONLY recourse" is to return to the post office where the APC problem occurred.  It didn't matter that I had both the receipt AND the defective label, and that I paid with a credit card.  I have to go back and talk to the APC specialist at THAT post office.  She agreed that this was stupid.  She even suggested I log a complaint, and helped me do it, and promised that someone would call me back within 2 days.

Sure enough, about 4 hours later, I got a call from the post office where the problem originated.  I explained what I needed and why it was not convenient for me to go there during their business hours.  And he agreed that it was unfortunate, but policy was policy.  But, he pointed out helpfully, they are open until 6:00 PM.

So, what did I learn from this?

  - Never EVER use the APC, unless you can get back to that post office, during business hours, if you have a problem.
  - Don't mail packages after hours anyway, unless they are less than 13 ounces (or you want them delivered back to your own house.)
  - Customer Service:  Not a big concern at the United States Postal Service.

Maybe, if I happen to be near that post office during business hours, I'll head over and seek my refund.  But mostly, I'm just going to quit shipping things USPS.  I have always been happy with FedEx customer service...  They have escalation paths for customer service complaints that get things fixed.  And I'll encourage everyone else I know to do the same. But given the trajectory the USPS is on, and from what I've seen of their customer service, I have to believe that eventually even congress will take the hint, especially in these days of rising budget-mindedness, and pull the plug.

Postscript:  I attempted to mail a link to this entry to the USPS Customer Service Center, to give them an opportunity to comment, but I ran into this:

Due to system upgrades, the ability to Email Us is also temporarily unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.

>Sigh...<