Provo Post Office Woes

If you are my Facebook Friend you know that the past  couple days I have had some major issues with the Post Office.  Here is a summary of what has happened so far.

I had gone about a week without receiving ANY mail.  Not just mail for me personally.  No mail came for John, our landlord, previous tenants.  I hadn’t even received junk mail.  And this is not the norm.  John and I MIGHT go a day without receiving any mail.  Once a week we get an insert that has a couple of grocery and hardware store ads, as well as coupons to restaurants.  It typically comes on Tuesday or Wednesday.  We have gotten it every week for over a year now.  Last week I didn’t even receive that.  So Friday I called the post office to see what was going on.  The first lady I talked to was pleasant enough.  She double checked that a hold hadn’t been put on our mail by mistake.  She couldn’t see any obvious reason for no mail to be delivered so she said she would talk to the carrier when he returned from his route and call me back.  By 5pm I hadn’t heard anything so I called the Post Office back.

This is where my HORRIBLE customer service experience started.  I called and explained the situation again.  Not only had I not received mail but my outgoing mail hadn’t been picked up even though the red flag was up. I was just wondering what was going on.  So I got put on hold.  And I stayed on hold.  For 30 minutes.  Until they closed.  About 15 minutes into the holding process I realized exactly what was going to happen.  They were going to keep me on hold until they closed and then just hang up on me.  And that is exactly what happened. At 530 I hear someone pick up the phone and fumble around for a couple seconds.  I said “Hello” a couple of times.  And then the call was disconnected.  I was FURIOUS!  To me, there is no excuse for that to ever happen. I answer phones all day myself.  I know that sometimes there isn’t an obvious answer.  Or possibly the person with the answer has left for the day.  Or maybe you are so busy that you forget there is someone on hold.  But there is NO reason to pick up a phone call and hang up on a customer without so much as a “goodbye”.  I don’t care how busy you are.  I don’t care how much you are looking forward to the weekend.  If you don’t want to help a customer on the phone don’t answer it.  At my work, the last 10-15 minutes of the work day I will not answer the phone because I am in the middle of closing down the shop.  I don’t answer the phone and then hang up on a customer.  I just don’t answer it.  Needless to say, this left a pretty sour taste in my mouth and did not give me a great start to my weekend.

Saturday I took Jimba to the vet.  I left my phone in the car so I didn’t realize that the post office had called me.  I looked at my phone, noticed the missed call and called them back.  I got the “privilege” of speaking with LeAnn, a supervisor at the Provo Post Office.  She starts the conversation by telling me she has no control over what mail I get delivered  and when.  If there is nothing in the mail, she  can’t help it.  I get that.  I guess there is a possibility that there was absolutely nothing in the mail for no one at my house for a week.  But I found that highly unlikely.  She proceeds to tell me that she talked to the carrier and he didn’t recognize my name.  I have obviously just moved there.  I tell her that I have lived there for over a year now, I haven’t changed my name, and why does my name matter.  I was under the impression that a carrier delivers mail based on the address, not the names.  If he delivered based on names alone he would be all sorts of confused by our house.  There are 3 people with different names that are supposed to get mail at our house.  Then there are all of the previous tenants that either haven’t changed their address or just don’t care about the junk mail they get.  So to tell me that the carrier doesn’t recognize my name sounds like a stupid excuse for me not getting my mail.  I should get any mail with my address on it, regardless of what name is on the envelope.  She also tells me that the carrier is not obligated to pick up outgoing mail if there is no mail to deliver.  This may be true.  I later found out (after a call to customer service) that picking up outgoing mail without delivering mail is something the local post offices have control over.  Some post offices tell carriers not to worry about outgoing mail.  But USPS encourages picking up outgoing mail if carriers notice it is there, even if there is nothing to deliver at that house.  

I then tell LeAnn about the horrible customer service I received on the phone when I called about this initial complaint.  She tells me that there is only 1 or 2 people answering phones and they are busy.  I tell her that being busy is no excuse for hanging up on a customer without so much as a “goodbye”.  She says she will “take my complaint into consideration”.  Umm, thanks?  The problem is, I am 95% sure she is the person I “talked” (who hung up on me) to on Friday.  So of course she isn’t going to do anything about it.  What is she going to do, write herself up?  Probably not.

LeAnn then tells me that maybe I should move my mail box if I want my mail delivered and picked up.  Here’s the deal.  I live in an old house on an old street.  My mail box is right next to my house, not on the street.  Every other house on my street and the street behind mine has their mail box next to or attached to their house.  There are literally 4 houses out of 50+ that have the mail box on the street.  I tell her that I shouldn’t have to move my mail box in order for the carrier to do his job. If the carrier isn’t able to walk from house to house delivering mail maybe he should get a new route that doesn’t require him getting out of the truck and, heaven forbid, walking up and down a street.  Her response?  Move your mail box.  I tell her I will not move my mail box until it is required for every house on my street to move their mail box as well.  I shouldn’t have to move my mail box just to make it easier or more convenient for her carrier.  We go in circles about why I should or shouldn’t move my mail box for a good 10 minutes before I get so frustrated I just hang up on her. 

I then called the customer service number for USPS.  I spoke with the nicest lady who helped me file a complaint with the consumer affairs office.  I am just waiting to hear from them in the next couple of days.  I find it interesting that if you look at the Provo Post Office’s Google reviews, they are overwhelmingly negative.  They have a 2.1 rating that goes back YEARS.  That means I am not the first person to have a horrible experience with this office. I might just be the first person to take the necessary steps to get the issues resolved.  I sincerely hope Consumer Affairs will be able to figure out why the customer service at the Provo location is so horrible.  Luckily I know this isn’t common with other locations in the area.  I worked rather closely with the Spanish Fork location and never had customer service issues.  Every time I have gone to or called the Orem location the employees have been nothing but friendly and helpful.  For some reason Provo just can’t get their act together.  If it wasn’t such a horrible pain in the butt to change everything over to a PO Box I would.  But there is no way I can do this in an effective and efficient manner since we get so much mail for so many different people.  I guess we will wait and see what happens. . .