mail delivery standards - boxes, baskets, and floors?

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

We live in a 2-family house with one mail basket hanging on the wall. For at least a decade, mail to both units just gets placed in that basket and we each take what's ours when we get home.

Lately I've been noticing that on occasion our mail carrier sees fit to deliver the mail to the two separate units by placing the envelopes on the floor by the door. It's a minor annoyance when it happens, but also has me concerned about mail getting lost or kicked away to where it might blow away. Should they be allowed to leave our mail on the floor? And are we also breaking the rules by not having an industry-standard mail box for each unit?

Comments

[lonelyholiday.livejournal.com]

I work in a building with I'm guessing ~20 offices, and the mail man just delivers a big mail bin to the front office and the building manager/owner distributes to everyone's separate mailbox in our lobby. I've been told that this is illegal because nobody except USPS employees are supposed to handle your mail. It could be considered "tampering." I get the idea that this is just a case where it's always been that way and nobody cares to do anything about it.

On the other hand, obviously at large companies, mail is delivered to a mail room and distributed by employees, not USPS staff. I'm guessing the distinction is that doesn't count as tampering because it's all internal/one company, whereas ours is among multiple small businesses.

So not really sure what that would fall under for you. If you're sorting out your mail from your neighbors', you're probably technically handling strangers' mail. But maybe rules are different for residential?

I realize this is probably unhelpful, but will click post anyway.

[lunarcamel.livejournal.com]

We were having the opposite problem where the mail carrier was not separating my triple-decker's mail into the appropriate three boxes. He'd just jam all the mail for all three units into one box (acknowledging the existence of three boxes by varying the one into which he jammed the mail). When we called the USPS to try to sort it out they told us that the landlord never registered the apartments as three separate units with whatever governmental agency is in charge of these things, and so as long as the mail got to 5 Elm Street it didn't matter if it didn't get separated out for apartments 1, 2, and 3.

That said, I think leaving the mail on the floor is awfully sketchy. Can you leave a nice note, talk to the people at your PO, or put up another basket?

Good luck.

[thesoxgap]

We have the same problem at my triple-decker, except it is all separate condos/rented condos and when Former Neighbors complained they stopped for a while, but now that we have New Neighbors all of our mail goes elsewhere. But only about once a week.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

The occasion might be when there is a substitute. Normally the regular carrier delivers 5 days a week, and the regular substitute one day a week but it isn't always the same day. ANd then there are the temporary substitutes who often have little training.

You can contact the Postmaster. If you are in Cambridge it is Kathy Lydon 617-575-8750. If it is Somerville I don't know who it is but you can call Kathy and find out.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I felt like whining to someone like the postmaster but wanted to figure out if I was also doing something wrong by our mailbox setup so that they would whien right back at me.

[curiositykt.livejournal.com]

In Medford (Though on the border, and I think it was somerville who delivered for us) we had slots in our doors. And the two doors opened on to an entry hallway. they would generally alternate between leaving it all in one big pile, separate piles and pushing it through the slots, though through the slots was the least likely thing to happen.

[ron_newman]

We've had so many posts about postal and delivery services that I just created a new 'mail' tag. (Though I don't think your particular question has come up before here.)

[sparkgrrl658.livejournal.com]

i was going to suggest the same thing, yay.

also, to the OP, i know it might be a pain, but why not just add another basket? i've actually lived in a few places that wouldn't leave my mail unless my name was on our specific mailbox, so i'm surprised this hasn't been an issue for you before now.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

Mainly inertia. It worked for 12 years, some of which we owned the house and some of which we didn't yet.

Now, I don't know if it will solve the problem or not, so I'm not running out to add errands to our list. Finding wall space to fit 2 boxes in place of the basket that's been tehre all along without messing W with the vintage doorbell/tiny mail locker/etc might be a challenge. OTOH, every house on our street is the same shape, so we could just look at a few other porches and copy the neighbors. ;-)

[elements.livejournal.com]

We have three separate standard mailboxes for each of the 3 apartments (plus one for the landlord) but our mail carrier almost always puts the mail precariously on the window ledge above the mailboxes or on the floor. Sometimes, in the recycling bin if it's near the mailboxes. As far as I can tell, they just find it too darn time-consuming to actually open a mailbox to deliver mail into it.