Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I just checked my mail. I got a pink "Sorry we missed you!" notice from my postman regarding a package that I was expecting today.

I've been home all day My doorbell has not rung. I am annoyed. I'm triply annoyed because this is an ongoing pattern: more than half of the packages mailed to me are not delivered when they're supposed to be -- the letter carrier doesn't try to deliver the package, just leaves me a redelivery slip and goes away. And then, more often than not, when I fill out the slip to request redelivery and leave it in the mail slot, they don't bother to pick that up, just pushing it back inside with the rest of the next day's mail. Or they pick up the slip but never come by with the package, leaving me an "If you don't claim this soon it gets sent back" notice a few days later.

The local postmaster has been quite unhelpful. About the only thing he'll tell me is, "Well you could come to the Post Office in person and pick it up tomorrow." The last time this happened, I wrote a formal letter of complaint to him and sent a copy to the Postmaster General. I never heard anything back. And now the phone number to my local post office doesn't work any more -- I get a phone company recording referring me to the USPS central toll-free number (so I called there and left a complaint).

The United States Postal Service does a pretty good job overall, despite my annoyance at how often postage rates rise, but there are some really bad spots here and there. Here (South-West Baltimore, the Franklin Post Office, 21223), there's this problem with getting packages delivered, which I've had no luck getting anything done about. And in Beltsville, MD, there's some screwiness such that mail sent from there to Merrifield, VA, can take up to three and a half weeks to get there, when it only takes three days to reach Merrifield from Baltimore.

Dammit, I want this fixed. I want packages that someone has paid postage to have delivered to me, to be delivered to me.