171–180 of 193 posts
Practically speaking, the outsides of envelopes addressed to you are much more like unencrypted HTTP traffic were: Trivial for many people other than sender and receiver to become aware of, therefore it's advisable to not print interesting secrets on the outside of mail in the first place (and indeed, you can just address mail without any front-facing return address or any return address if you don't want a chance of…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hand-delivering mail intended for my neighbors, that was mistakenly placed in my mailbox, is how I met most of my neighbors. The sloppy USPS is an important part of my social life.
USPS has a few times delivered items to our address which were intended for the recipient 1 block north with the same street number. It's how I've started to wonder if they might be Russian mafia all over there in their track suits.
I have a version of this; I have the email {{popular-asian-surname}}@gmail.com and I've seen _everything_. I've had many many bank statements from India. I've had someone in California order a brand new BMW and got the details for collection. I've had paypal invoices and statements (this is one funny because they refuse to action the delink). I used to reach out and tell them I didn't sign up for their service. But h…
I live in a small town and I have my postmaster's personal cell phone number. She's very professional and attentive,. Based on our conversations, I don't believe USPS maintains the level of rigor for reliability that software engineers would expect (fire drills, KPIs for reliability, incident review, root cause analysis, etc). We started having serious issues with valuable mail turning up missing. Car registration ta…
In South Africa we have the South African Post Office which has consistently and increasingly been made redundant/irrelevant by the actions of one particular organization far more so than any other: The South African Post Office
One of their biggest self-inflicted loss of relevance was due to a large strike by their workers in the early 2010's. Because of the prolonged strike people were not receiving their statements in a timely manner. At the time the law required that financial institutions send statements by post, due to this incident the government allowed the law to be changed and they were now allowed to send them by email instead.
For decades now the Post Office has had a reputation of stealing from mail. When my grandmother was still alive she used to always send a birthday card with a cheque by post to all her grandchildren for their birthdays, for around the last 10 years she was still alive the envelope I received had always been slit open and clearly "inspected", fortunately it seems they didn't feel these low value cheques were worth the effort.
Something else which used to keep the Post Office slightly relevant is that it was about the only place you could go to get your annual car license renewed. Every time you'd go there would be a huge queue waiting for the single teller who could process these while there were like 4 other tellers sitting at the other counters doing nothing. A few years back the organization which manages the licenses (not the post office) made a very surprisingly completely painless online system where you could pay by credit card and have it arrive at your door within a couple of days by courier.
In 2013 when I moved into a new house, I went to the local post office to arrange a P.O. box. To which they said "Sorry, we have none available, we can put you onto a waiting list for if one becomes available", it seems it never occurred to that branch's post master to perhaps look into making additional P.O. boxes available.
I have other stories of their general incompetence, but you get the idea. They've only been able to get away with it due to it being a government owned organization with seemingly zero effort by the government to hold management accountable for the grossly poor management, something that's pretty much the norm with most of our government and government run organizations.
I have a version of this; I have the email {{popular-asian-surname}}@gmail.com and I've seen _everything_. I've had many many bank statements from India. I've had someone in California order a brand new BMW and got the details for collection. I've had paypal invoices and statements (this is one funny because they refuse to action the delink). I used to reach out and tell them I didn't sign up for their service. But h…
I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should be equivalent, so they shouldn't have let him sign up, but they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten job offers, bills from medical offices, even one…
I wonder he he also receives that mail or was going to but someone caught it? My post office for a good year was horrendous about delivering me my neighbor's mail. I felt like a Jr. Mail Carrier in training ;) Last few years they've been SPOT on. I tried informed delivery but honestly it's more of a hassle for me as my wife says "this should have arrived today" and of course it doesn't so she thinks it's stolen and .…
> it's more of a hassle for me as my wife says "this should have arrived today" Same here (minus the "stolen" part). Wife overlooks the disclaimer on the page saying "delivery soon" and assumes that today's photos should be of today's deliveries. Continually pointing that fact out has not (yet) dissuaded her from this belief of "today's photos equal today's deliveries"
I live in a small town and I have my postmaster's personal cell phone number. She's very professional and attentive,. Based on our conversations, I don't believe USPS maintains the level of rigor for reliability that software engineers would expect (fire drills, KPIs for reliability, incident review, root cause analysis, etc). We started having serious issues with valuable mail turning up missing. Car registration ta…
Informed delivery showed me a picture of the envelope containing my child's social security card, along with 2 other mail pieces for the day.
You can guess which one somehow didn't reach the mailbox. It's been months trying to get a replacement and now at under a year old my son already has to worry about identity theft his whole life.
I have a version of this; I have the email {{popular-asian-surname}}@gmail.com and I've seen _everything_. I've had many many bank statements from India. I've had someone in California order a brand new BMW and got the details for collection. I've had paypal invoices and statements (this is one funny because they refuse to action the delink). I used to reach out and tell them I didn't sign up for their service. But h…
I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should be equivalent, so they shouldn't have let him sign up, but they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten job offers, bills from medical offices, even one…
What evidence do you have that this happened, aside from the fact that you're receiving mail intended for him and sent to that address?
Unless you have something much stronger than that, chances are the other guy actually has firstlast2@gmail.com (or whatever) and frequently forgets to add the number.
I live in a small town and I have my postmaster's personal cell phone number. She's very professional and attentive,. Based on our conversations, I don't believe USPS maintains the level of rigor for reliability that software engineers would expect (fire drills, KPIs for reliability, incident review, root cause analysis, etc). We started having serious issues with valuable mail turning up missing. Car registration ta…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have one like that. I have the email first.last@gmail.com, and I have a very uncommon last name. Lo and behold, Google let some dude in Australia who happens to share my name sign up with firstlast@gmail.com. According to the docs the two should be equivalent, so they shouldn't have let him sign up, but they did... and now I get his email all the time. I have gotten job offers, bills from medical offices, even one…
I have the same problem. There are about 5-7 active idiots using “firstlast@gmail.com” and I get them all. Suspect their real email is something like “firstlast10” or “firstlest” (minor spelling variant). Not sure if they deliberately misspell their email or are just stupid. For a while really thought amount was compromised. Slowly I realized they are just idiots and assholes. They don’t always pay bills, buy $100 T-…