Normally I’m someone that gives the US Postal Service a lot of credit. They move a lot of mail, don’t charge that much and are pretty dang reliable. But this week has really tried my patience.

We filed our change of address notice in early February, online. We got confirmation of it by mail a week before we moved, and as of today still no mail. That’s right, 20 days after moving in, no mail.

Now, the USPS does tell you that it takes 7 - 10 “postal service” days for your mail to catch up with you. I get that, I’m even perfectly understanding of that. But until you get past that they won’t answer any questions. And god forbid you want to talk to a post office by phone. First you have to call the 800 number, then you have to tell it which post office you want, then you have to call them, then you have to sit on hold, then if you finally get through they just confirm that your request is in the computer and tell you to be patient.

Yeah.

And because we’ve got rural mail delivery now there’s a whole ‘nother layer to the process. About a week after we moved in a form was left for us in the box asking us to identify who lived in the house and who was allowed to receive mail here. Then I put it back in the mailbox and waited for our mail person to pick it up. Every day for 8 days I put the flag up. Every day I got home and the flag was down but the form was still there and no mail.

Today I finally decided to at least find out where the hell the mail was so that we could pick it up. All our bills were out there somewhere, along with my onion starts, birthday cards, yarn from Liz and those great home improvement coupons you get when you move.

And it took, literally, 15 phone calls to a combination of the 800 number, the old post office, the consumer service number, the wrong new post office and the the right new post office. No one seemed to know why we weren’t getting mail service and no one was willing to admit to having three weeks of our mail.

So frustrating!

In the end it turns out that the previous owners of our new house put their mail on a pick-up hold when they moved out instead of having it forwarded. And because the post office is a bureaucracy a mail hold applies to the house not the person. Which means that as far as the post office was concerned we didn’t want mail service, even though the had a forward mail request for us for mail service starting March 1. At that point I was even told that since no one could find our mail at any post office that probably it had all been “returned to sender”. Riiiight.

And it turned out the new post office did have our mail once they really looked. So I picked it up just as it closed. They’ve promised that we’ll have service starting tomorrow. So good, they are into customer service. But just when I was ready to forgive all, they asked me why I hadn’t called or come and picked it up sooner! And then I had to launch into my tale of unhelpful people telling me to be patient for the last 20 days.

So yeah. Not really whining, just venting.

In the end it’s all fine. Nothing was lost except maybe the onion starts that have been sitting in a warm damp box for 3 weeks. And wow, that yarn from Liz - absolutely gorgeous. I bought it to make Mike a pair of gloves, but now I’m planning to make something for myself…