Do the Ss in “USPS” stand for “SUCKS”?

Last week was a lighthearted, nostalgic look at some of the more fun things about the postal system. This week, I’m going to talk about the the annoying, and possibly criminal, acts of the postal system, specifically the United States Postal System.

In the past year, 90% of the emails that are addressed to my younger son, who still lives at home, has gone missing.

How do I know? The USPS has this service called Informed Delivery that you can sign up for. Every day that there is mail delivery, they send you an email with the scanned pieces of mail that you should expect that day, everything from important stuff to junk mail. From these emails, I know what should be arriving any particular day. And I give them some grace. If a piece arrives a few days later, I’m okay with that because the mail is scanned in a different city than mine and it’s never a direct route from A to B.

My younger son doesn’t get a lot of mail, but one of our favorite aunts always sends our kids a birthday card. She sent him one in November which never arrived.

I let her know that it’s lost and she insisted on sending a second. THAT one also went missing. Someone is bilking a septuagenerian.

My kid also had doctors’ bills go missing last summer. Luckily, we knew that they were lost because of Informed Delivery and called the doctors’ offices to let them know so we wouldn’t get overdue fines.

Even his junk mail goes missing. What in the actual F??

This month, our oldest child’s birthday card from the same wonderful aunt also went missing. This is a screen capture from the USPS.com site where you can log in to see your Informed Delivery if you want to (the other screenshots are from the emails they sent me).

And my husband and I have had important mail go missing, too.

But you know what doesn’t go missing? Mangled pieces of junk mail. This image looks like the mail will be shredded or fall through the cracks, but it arrived just fine (I couldn’t resist a snarky comment at the bottom):

I have reported the missing mail through the Informed Delivery system as well as filed a report for stolen mail on the USPS site and NOTHING was ever done about it. I know it’s not my mail delivery person (or at least I’m 99.9% sure it’s not him). I always develop relationships with our mail carriers, asking about their families and giving them gifts for the holidays. I suspect it’s someone at the facility where the mail is scanned.

I’m at a loss as to what recourse I have next? Do I go to the police? The FBI? The USPS obviously doesn’t care, but I feel like there needs to be a criminal investigation. Anyone out there have a solution for us?