These days - when people mail me payments...

[bloke]

...I offer these suggestions:

Try to not make the mailing appear as if it has an enclosed payment.

- Put “Joe Sellmansberger” rather than “Mid-South Music” as the mailing address name.

- Put SEVERAL pieces of paper (including odd sizes...perhaps even a small trifold junk brochure) in the envelope.

- Even – possibly – add “Reverend” to your return address name, and put a fictitious name of a church on an added line above your return address – perhaps even going so far as to write (along the bottom of the BACK of the envelope) something such as “We missed you last Sunday, Brother Joe”, etc.

- Avoid special services, such as Priority, Registered, or Return Receipt, which could draw the attention of possibly-nefarious postal sorters, or mailbox pilferers.

[tubatodd]

Are people mailing cash?

[Schlitzz]

Yup. My mother sent gift cards, and a personal check, with one of the cards, on Valentine’s Day.

Once again, do not send signed personal checks in the mail.

The have your routing, account #’s, and YOUR signature.

As far as for Joe, he sometimes forgets to shut off the window AC, before he runs the lawnmower.

[bloke]

People don't mail me cash, but I think anytime anyone is mailing any type of payment it shouldn't look like a mailed payment.

[MiBrassFS]

I don’t have any pay app accounts. Had one with PP, but closed it when the gov’t went tax crazier and someone tried pull a scam.

I recently sold something to someone here. I trust them, so I sent them the thing (I don’t remember what it was) and they Priority Mailed me actual cash. I’m thinking if someone wants the weird stuff I have that the way I’ll do it.

I’ll probably end up croaking with a ton of stuff. It’ll be someone else’s problem then.

[russiantuba]

Summer of 2007 or 2008 I was living with another family member (last name same as mine), and towards the end of the summer , I was convinced to buy a GW Alan Baer mouthpiece. It was made for my horn and seemed better than the PT 50+ I was getting tired of.

After a few days of it showing delivered, I asked the family if it had come, and they said no. I even remember posting on the old forum for advice and Ivan even contacted me to keep him updated. Since it was nearing the end of summer and I was heading back to undergrad, it was imperative I get it. I remember calling the post office on breaks and I needed to speak to a manager in person. I remember getting over there all sweaty and dirty (worked for a major tire chain my cousin managed a store for). Waited 45 minutes and the manager said they would have to contact the mail carrier and they would call the next day. Didn’t receive a call, so I called and found out:

“The mail carrier delivered it to another James Green who lived several streets over, because she thought the address was wrong since this guy receives tons of packages”. They gave me the address, which even then felt uncomfortable, and on my off days he wasn’t home.

I kept calling the post office and the mail carrier stated he was never home when they went by. After a couple weeks of this, the week I was packing up to head back, family I was staying with said it arrived, box had been opened but mouthpiece was fine. I think the other guy received it and delivered it himself.

When people ask me why I won’t vote by mail, I say “would you mail $5000 cash to someone using the post office and ensure it gets there”?

[bloke]

This is off the topic, but it's a related topic.

When I ship things to people and they give me a campus or military base address, I beg them to offer me some sort of alternate off-campus/off-base address of someone they trust or a business they trust, because those have been the most common shipping addresses whereby stuff got lost and never was found.

If they don't offer me an alternative address, I have them sign and scan a document and then email it to me that states that the moment I hand that package or parcel over to the shipper to ship to that specific designated address, regardless of the policy or attitude of the shipper it becomes the intended recipient's property and the intended recipients responsibility. This is the same thing I used to do back towards the later days of Greyhound bus shipping when everything was falling apart there.

[Mary Ann]

I think this is a regional problem, because I send checks locally quite often without a problem. Actually, never a problem the whole time I've lived here. I have noted that there are places reported here where the US mail carriers are not in the same category as those here, who have done a splendid job for me over the years and over quite a few different carriers. Too bad it is not the same everywhere; I have the same good luck (?) with UPS and FedEx deliveries -- same drivers for a very long time, who even remember who I am from having interacted with them. I've concluded I live in a really nice place even if it does roast me for six months of the year.
However -- if someone tells you they have a local problem and what to do about it -- just do it.

[bloke]

For fairly wide area around here, all of the mail goes through the Memphis sorting center. That seems to be the problem.

Decades ago, we had some amazing postal workers. One of my friends father was a savant (mail delivery person) who knew the name and address of every single person in Memphis.

Using the word "savant", I only mean the positive connotations of the word, though I guess he was a little bit unusual. One thing he would do when talking on the telephone was to simply hang up when he had said what he needed to say.. ie. no "goodbye".

[arpthark]

Over the past two weeks, I very curiously watched a package get sent to me from Memphis, almost all the way up to me (as far as the Southern CT regional processing center, about an hour away), and then make its way back to Memphis, where it is currently being bounced around various processing centers. At least it's insured.

[bloke]

Over the past two weeks, I very curiously watched a package get sent to me from Memphis, almost all the way up to me (as far as the Southern CT regional processing center, about an hour away), and then make its way back to Memphis, where it is currently being bounced around various processing centers. At least it's insured.

I think in the future when I ship things with my own labels, I'm going to make the return address ZIP code even tinier. I wonder if scanners are picking up the return address, even though it's in very small print. I might even put a little piece of tape over the return address that can be easily removed, with a little note on the piece of paper that says "please remove paper to reveal return address" or some such.

[arpthark]

Over the past two weeks, I very curiously watched a package get sent to me from Memphis, almost all the way up to me (as far as the Southern CT regional processing center, about an hour away), and then make its way back to Memphis, where it is currently being bounced around various processing centers. At least it's insured.

I think in the future when I ship things with my own labels, I'm going to make the return address ZIP code even tinier. I wonder if scanners are picking up the return address, even though it's in very small print. I might even put a little piece of tape over the return address that can be easily removed, with a little note on the piece of paper that says "please remove paper to reveal return address" or some such.

It's no fault of yours, and I am sure it will get sorted out.

I live on the rural edge of a medium-small city (pop. 40k), but still within the city limits. I usually take packages to the tiny post office in the bordering town (pop. 2,500) and they get sent out fine. The one time I was downtown in my city and had to run an errand, I decided to stop by the main city post office to drop off a package of mouthpieces. Of course, that one got lost and I had to initiate a missing mail search because it was never scanned in. They probably dropped it or put it under the counter or something. It eventually got sorted out. Just a quirk of the system.

[bloke]

It's eight and a half miles to one of two post offices, so when I do the first class or whatever they're calling ground these days, I tend to make my own labels just typing them out on Open Office or Libra Office.

I keep some multiple dollar stamps here and tracking labels, and that saves me the drive.

I've got a stack of priority mail boxes and sacks here as well and print those official labels off the computer from the USPS website.

[Sousaswag]

I was terrified to send my rotors out to Martin Wilk. I went UPS, who charged me $33 to ship them about 4 hours away with insurance. It got from me to Indiana without a hitch.

On their way BACK to me, it took them 3 days just to leave Indiana, and then bounced around Illinois for a while before they finally made it here. Conveniently, on the day they said, but about 3 hours late. At least they made it.

I refuse to use the USPS anymore. They lost a few things I'd sent out recently, and since I chose standard shipping, they weren't insured. Luckily, they found their way to the place they needed, but after about a week of "WTF" moments.

[Schlitzz]

Summer of 2007 or 2008 I was living with another family member (last name same as mine), and towards the end of the summer , I was convinced to buy a GW Alan Baer mouthpiece. It was made for my horn and seemed better than the PT 50+ I was getting tired of.

It ain’t easy, being Green.

I ordered some spares from Doug Elliott, during the previous
Orange regime. They went to Amarillo, TX twice. Whilst I live up here in Kitsapalaccia, WA. But I have a good set of his XB series, and working on his CB series.

I seem to remember a GB prototype bass trombone mouthpiece, got lost in the mail, and ended up on an auction site.

I don’t know if USPS hires most of its workers from Blue Lake, but give me some time to start a few conspiracy theories.

[russiantuba]

Over the past two weeks, I very curiously watched a package get sent to me from Memphis, almost all the way up to me (as far as the Southern CT regional processing center, about an hour away), and then make its way back to Memphis, where it is currently being bounced around various processing centers. At least it's insured.

I am not use if they use the same system as other shippers, but I found out how this happens at other shippers—

Your package is on a pallet or some sort of container to be loaded on a truck, it is scanned into a truck but not loaded, so the system thinks it’s on a truck when it is still back in Memphis. The truck makes several stops and unloads, and if backed up or behind, it’s just scanned in virtually or fake labels for the pallet are made.

So, when the truck makes it to Connecticut in your case, it’s not there, the system can either redirect it back to Memphis directly, or it shows not received and bounces around backwards until it is found.

[bloke]

This is a small package, the Memphis sorting center (just as with the rest of Memphis) has a dubious reputation. It could be a bunch of make-work monkey business, just plain ol' incompetence, or who-knows-what (if on purpose)...??