Is mail always this bad?

I just love it when people complain when their mail is wet, when it's been pouring down with rain  .

In our case, it had been raining a lot in the UK when it was sent, but not in the US.  It was posted at a Post Office.  No one handled it on a route until it was delievered by registered mail on a sunny day on the US side.  It's possible it landed in a US airport that had rain and sat being drenched, and that is why I am not sure it was a UK thing at all.

This parcel wasn't wet in the way that indicated a brief damp walk in the rain.  It was wet in the manner of someone dunking it into a lake.  I squeezed water out of some of the papers.  If it had become wet in the UK, it had been out of the UK for days at this point.  Either someone took it to the beach for a swim, it was set on an open container and allowed to soak up some rain, or it was dropped into a puddle and left there a while during transport

Our life as a couple depended upon this parcel, and the package we sent to the embassy contained visibly damaged documents (like the sponsor's letter which I had to unstick from another document because they had fused together because of the damp being drenched).

I assume you do a great job because I tend to do that unless I know otherwise.  However, I've seen people really balls things up.  It doesn't mean you, but it doesn't mean that everyone who complains of damp mail when it's raining is whinging without warrant.

On a side note, why don't they make the bag/cart thing more rain resistant if it's really exposing post to the elements?  Or are we talking about complaints about a few drops that something might pick up from the bag to the slot?  I can honestly say that I rarely receive wet mail here.  The time that the carrier left mail half in the slot was one of them.

I LOVE my postie and I love the local sorting office.  They always go out of the way to make sure I get my packages.

I've only ever had one thing go missing and it was a package coming from the States.  No idea what side of the ocean the issue occured though. 

I think in either country it depends where you live.  I don't think either postal service as a whole is better or worse.

So is our huge box we sent full of handmade christmas presents that we paid around 50 pounds to send lost forever???

We tried submitting a complaint, but they said they are only responsible for it on this side of the water.

Well, it could have been the US side that lost it.  Was it insured?  Sort of sucks if it was and it only covers loss in the UK (how do you prove that it was lost in the UK if that's the case?)

Our postie likes to drop the "while you were out cards" through our slot without even knocking or buzzing. Then there are the times when the postie himself  signs for the signature required items and leaves them on the step our front.

UPDATE:

Our family received their package today!!! It only took about 8 weeks, but it arrived with no damages..Woo hoo! 

Good news PD!

Obviously our mail is subject to the vagaries of the entire system, but as far as our local postmen and post offices are concerned, they're pretty good.   We're very rural, and the regular postmen pretty much know everybody on their round, especially those of us who receive a fair amount of mail.  They know who is friendly with who etc. and will always get neighbors to sign for recorded items and take them in if they can, ditto for larger packages and the ParcelForce guys.

On a note of speedy service thanks to a combination of Royal Mail & the USPS, I mailed a card here last Monday afternoon and it arrived in California on the Wednesday morning.

Yeah I had that happen last week too, I sent a card on Monday and was there by Thursday, I was amazed! 


Congrats on package getting there!

I've found the mail service to be very inconsistent where I live - sometimes things arrive days later than usual, sometimes bizarrely quickly, and sometimes (at least twice) not at all.

I never did receive my postal ballot form last year! I even called the appropriate county office in the US to confirm it was sent to the correct address, and it was. They even told me what date it was mailed, and confirmed that it was sent airmail. But it never arrived. I subsequently voted with the emergency 'backup' ballot just in case.

Sigh. I'm about to move though to an address only a couple of miles away. I hope the service is a little more reliable there..

I have 245 pieces of feedback on eBay - 243 of these are as a buyer, though some of the stuff I've collected in person or had a delivery guy collect (which accounts for no more than 20 of these purchases though).  Anyhow, more than 200 items equals a lot of stuff to receive in the post, all of which was bought in the UK (not to mention all the stuff I buy on amazon too).

Only twice has something not turned up as expected, and both times the items were sitting in our local Post Office and we just didn't get a "While You Were Out" card. 

Fortunately, I called the Post Office both times and both times a friendly person answered the phone and duly looked for it, found it and set it aside for me to collect.

So I have no complaints with the UK postal service.

By contrast, my mother lives in Carrollton, Texas (north Dallas), and has had countless problems with her local Post Office over the past 20 years.

I've found the mail service to be very inconsistent where I live - sometimes things arrive days later than usual, sometimes bizarrely quickly, and sometimes (at least twice) not at all.

I think this and LBA's posts sum it up; how good your mail service is depends on your local post office.  I never had a problem with mail in the US before moving to north London, and I haven't had any trouble since moving out to the UK countryside.

 the mail always gets through (well in my case it does)