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You might envy the charm of brownstone life, but apparently one pitfall is that the some mail carriers don't like to deliver the mail to them. The NY Sun examines the situation after some Brooklyn residents realized their mail wasn't coming. Mail carriers feel stoops are dangerous especially in winter weather, and lately some residents' mail has been "rained upon, blown away, and destroyed." You'd think the mail would have to be delivered at the house, but:
The U.S. Postal Service wants the ongoing tiffs between brownstone residents and their letter carriers to soon be a thing of the past. The Postal Service is attempting to phase out door delivery in Brooklyn and other cities across the country.Chew on that as you go to your brownstone open houses! This makes Gothamist think of two things: 1) Online bill paying has never sounded better; and 2) Will NYC become like a college campus, with a central mail facility where you pick up your mail and packages?Mr. Gaynor said door delivery service is costly and inefficient. Instead, he said, the Postal Service is pushing for group mailboxes, known as "cluster boxes," that catch the mail for multiple tenants...
...As part of the move to phase out stoop service, when new residents move in to a brownstone they are not guaranteed mail delivery to the top of the stoop, according to a customer service agent at the Postal Service.
And do you remember Harvey Kneeslapper on Sesame Street?
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Can postal employees get any lazier?
The postal guys that service my building find it too difficult and time consuming to actually drop our mail in individual boxes so they just dump a big pile of mail for the whole building in the foyer. If they can't do their jobs or are unwilling to go up a few steps to deliver mail, fire em'.
frankly, the USPS in new york SUCKS. i've had so much stuff get "lost" in the mail here. twice i've sent birthday items (a gift and a card) through the mail which never got to the recipients. countless times i've failed to receive bills or checks, even when i lived in doormanned buildings. now i know why kramer tried to cancel. the only thing i ever get reliably is bills and alumni mags for previous tenants.
It's already like that in Park Slope. If a package or a magazine doesn't fit in your mail slot or box, you have to wait in a long-ass line at the 9th Street Van Brunt Station, and then get yelled at by the lady there. It is terrible, and not remotely fun or collegial.
I agree. The USPS has ALREADY stopped reliable mail delivery in Brooklyn. I have had insured packages left on the steps because it was too time consuming to ring the bell (guess what - stolen! Guess what - USPS won't pay insurance!), tons of missing mail, and overall hassles with the whole affair. It is the most unprofessional mail service.
I've lived in Manhattan since 1987 (always in brownstones) and, at most, have lost maybe 3 or 4 pieces of mail during that period.
Since when did it become okay not to do your job, refuse to even after complaints and then have a policy changed because you still won't do the job and the company doesn't want to look bad.
Rain, Sleet and Snow.
The mail is always supposed to be delivered. Since when did they only hire Newman clones as employees.
Has Brooklyn broken the 50% barrier?
I had poor mail delivery when I lived in one of the wealthiest zip codes around -- 10021.
Now I live in 10024 and it's very good. Excellent.
Regarding the stoops, it seems to me that if a stoop isn't shovelled or is icy, the mail carrier has a legitimate beef not to walk up it that day -- they can just hold the mail at the POBox or redeliver it later -- that is, if you want your mail promptly, keep the stoop clean.
That said, it's terrible to pre-emptively eliminate service up stoops just because of a few days of bad weather a year.
Our mail carrier seems to be on this plan already. I hate sorting through everyone's mail. If my netflix go missing there is going to be a PROBLEM...
Do you know what it's like to have to go up and down and up and down those stairs?. Up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down.
Trippin' and slippin' and dippin' and flippin.
Up and down up and down up and down
It's enough to make you go postal, as we like to say.
And let's add to this, FedEx and UPS drivers who refuse to come back, refuse to leave slips, leave packages with neighbors or nearby businesses and don't leave slips. I would WELCOME a central place to go pick up mail and packages. And don't say "ship to work" - not everyone has that option.
Our mail service was definitely more reliable 15 years ago here in Brooklyn Heights and we usually received our mail by noon. Now, we're lucky to get our mail by 3pm. Our mail has been lost, late, ripped up, etc. We often get mail from people who live a few doors or blocks away. People who moved from my building 10 years ago still get their important mail sent here (bank/IRA statements, bills, etc.).
My mail carrier told me that several factors are at play here.
- More people with disposable income have moved into neighborhoods like mine. They generally get more mail including catalogs, brochures, bank/stock statements, bills, etc. Thanks to the internet, it's easy to just click for that Lands' End catalog. Maybe a little too easy.
- The USPS is cutting costs and my mail carrier just got two more blocks to deliver mail to. I usually still see her at 6pm delivering mail. A couple of years ago, she went home by 4pm. Everyone knows that the longer you work, the more tired you become and you tend to make mistakes/cut corners. Last week, she was running late and just dumped all of our mail on the floor for us to sort out. This happened a few times already this year. While this makes me mad, I really can't blame her.
- More junk mail which my mail carrier acknowledged helps pay her salary.
Ben Franklin would be proud. Exactly what would be the function of the mail carrier if postal deliveries were to stop coming to people's doors? Let's entrust this service with the newspaper delivery people and cut down on some of the overhead (plus the cushy benefits these govt. drones enjoy).
That's a good point that was raised: having to deliver catalogs and crap all day must take all the urgency & importance outta wanting to do the job correctly anyway.
I sure wouldn't suffer thru the whole "neither sleet nor snow nor pouring rain shall stop us" routine just to bring some jerkoff their Victorias Secret catalog.
Hell no.
well that's the thing, before junkmail, you only got a letter when it was a bill or uncle harvey from jail. sorta. but now even the dead get junkmail, cause it keeps comin even 10 years after you die.
The Brooklyn post offices themselves are like third world countries, complete with chickens and goats. Fortunately, my carrier does a great job.
I just don't buy the whole catalog argument. The mail carrier at my parents' place here has to climb many steps to get to each residence, and I'm willing to bet they all get a lot of crap (they tend to be in a certain income bracket), yet the mail here always arrives by 11am.
Maybe they just give a shit here? If you don't like your job, find another one.
I was disappointed that the stoop thing was all this reporter focused on. After the call for stories she asked be posted on the Clinton Hill Blog, a bunch of people (myself included) came forward with a variety of complaints about the Adelphi post office -- lost mail, delivery to the wrong address, and other problems are rampant at this post office. I realize it's not any better at lots of other post offices in the city, either.
I've taken to sending my rent checks to my landlord in Fort Greene by FedEx, because I had two months in a row earlier this summer when the USPS never delivered them. That's unacceptable.
I think I'll dump all of my work out the window on monday..lets see how that goes..
Some local post offices are just extra evil. Our Bay Ridge branch would not deliver any packages, ever - on the day your package came in, you'd get the yellow slip claiming you weren't there to receive it.
I sent an email to some central postal service complaint address (mentioning this and a few other things) and got a personal phone call from the NEW manager a month or so later. They actually corrected a lot of things (including package delivery.) Cause and effect or coincidence, who knows?
I never us the USPS. I still have 37¢ and 2¢ stamps from over a year ago. what's the rate? 39¢.
they're as lazy and or lazier than the MTA employees and quite frankly there are better ways to pay bills and receive packages.
New York City is the cheapest place for the USPS to operate. It is a huge economy of scale; one stop at a building delivers mail for 10's, 100's of people. Yet it costs the same for me to mail my rent to Lafayette St. as it does for me to mail my imaginary uncle in Alaska. For this reason I see zero excuse for the shitty mail service experienced in town and the unbelievably long, snaking lines at the post offices. That said, my mailman is great.
NY NY sounds like they need a renovation over there. I deliver in N.J. and if we were doing a job like that we would be fired. remember carriers you get paid by the hour so get up those steps and sort through the mail and get an inspection, cut your overload and do the JOB right!!!
"The Brooklyn post offices themselves are like third world countries, complete with chickens and goats."
So, so true (though I've never seen chickens or goats). When I lived in Park Slope, I'd sometimes pop in the 9th Street branch to buy stamps. NEVER ONCE was the machine equipped to work for normal people: broken, would only accept exact change, etc. Of course, there were always about six thousand people waiting in line.