Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
USPS: ‘WE CARE’
“WE CARE.” Of course, you do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t write it in half-inch-high bold black letters.
“We sincerely regret the damage to your mail during handling by the Postal Service. We hope this incident did not inconvenience you,” says the plastic bag that contains the remains of a magazine my Marine subscribes to. Well, “remains” is a bit charitable, actually. The bag contained seven-eighths of the cover of a magazine he subscribes to.
Inconvenience? Not really. In fact, it streamlined the process of retrieving it from the mailbox and depositing it into the garbage can quite a bit. Who says the government always just makes life more complicated?
Published in General
It reminds me that decades ago, when I used to get National Review, it seemed that any issues with cover illustrations or articles that drew any kind of wider attention took a long time to reach me by mail, and would arrive somewhat beat up.
That is beyond “spindle” and nearing “mutilate”.
If they really cared there would have been a twenty in the bag with the rest of the magazine.
Ricochet Best Comment of the Week.
Got one of those a couple months ago. The wife sent a check to pay the electric bill and a few weeks later we got half of the envelope with half of the check. We got the part with the return address and I suppose the power company got the other half.
We just got a letter saying that some of our mail was lost when the delivery truck caught fire.
Early 90s I was renewing and the offer included a free blue National Review coffee cup.
It showed up, I opened the box and the cup was broken. I sent it back.
The second showed up, I opened the box and the cup was broken. I sent it back.
The third one showed up, I opened the box and the cup was broken. I sent it back with a note stating We should give it up.
I am at that age where I have a daily dose of several prescribed medicines. During the early part of 2020, it seemed to be risky to go to CVS to pick them up. The company pushes delivery strongly, so I started to say OK to the delivery option. What that meant in practice was that CVS would drop the bottles into the mail, and I’d get them in my mailbox. At first, this worked fine.
Until one day when that didn’t happen. The pill bottle didn’t arrive, and the alleged tracking function just showed it as between the store and me, I live about a mile from the drugstore, so there aren’t many intermediate points.
Luckily this is not some kind of critical pill I must take every day to continue living, but when it got lost I quickly found out how well (that is, not well) the process worked.
I have concluded that:
Now I go get all of my prescriptions at the store, even though they still try to get me to have them delivered.
I have Tricare for life and get my prescriptions through express scripts/USPS, so far it has worked well, knock on wood. Regular mail is another story. Mail frequently gets returned to sender saying that I am no longer at my address. This has happened to my vehicle registration renewal and voter registration card and others that have contacted me, who knows how much has been returned that I have never heard about. I would say weekly I get one of my neighbors items of mail. Last summer I mailed out a gym membership cancellation, a month later I found it lying on the ground as I was walking my dog. The stamp had been canceled meaning it made it to the Post Office, it was dirty and torn. I never could figure out what happened with it. A year ago they lost a piece of certified mail. No one seemed to care.
I’ve the cover of Rush’s newsletter and National Review partially torn . . .
I feel obligated to present my experience with home delivery of medications. For many, many years now (well over 10, maybe 20) I have gotten most all my medications through home delivery, which most often was delivered by the USPS. I have only had one lost delivery. I know it was the USPS mailman’s fault because I met him at the mailbox (joint 12 plex for our condo), because I knew the shipment was due. It was not there in the mail he handed me, but the USPS online report was that it had been delivered about the time the mailman and I had met. It never shows up. But when I called the supplier, they promptly sent me a replacement at no charge. I guess I’ve just been lucky