Can’t Get Mail: USPS Won’t Replace Mail Key
About 6 weeks ago I lost the key to my apartment’s mail box. The building management doesn’t have a spare and neither does our landlord. The building manager said we’d have to go to the post office to order a replacement.
So, a day later I go to the post office and ask about getting a spare key. The post office staff prints out some blank receipt paper and has me write my name, address, apartment number and phone number on it. Then he charges me $25 dollars for the replacement fee and says the post office will call me in 10-20 days.
6 weeks later and I still haven’t gotten a call. So, this past Monday I go back to the post office and ask about the key. The staff member at the desk says she’ll go and check. She goes into the back and pulls out a clipboard with a bunch of slips of receipt paper, presumably filled out the same way mine was, and says the key isn’t in yet. I ask when it will be and she shrugs.
Keep in mind, my dad passed away a few months ago and I’m in the process of selling his house. However, because he was a federal employee and OPM is apparently being run by 2 people at the moment, the process of collecting his unpaid wages, any deaths benefits and his tax forms has been one of the most tortuous and unnecessarily complicated tasks I have ever undertaken, and has only recently gotten to the point where they are sending out important mail regarding all of the above. However, they are sending mail with time or security sensitive information to his old house, as are his insurance companies, his old banks where the accounts have been closed and a variety of other entities who I’ve been working with to wrap up the probate process. Getting anybody to send mail to my address instead of his has been a stupidly impossible and inconsistent process as well.
All that said, there is a shit load of important mail going to his house. So, I tried to get his address changed to mine. The penultimate step in that process is filling out a secondary form USPS sends to the new address, that I would have to fill out and bring back to the post office. However, this secondary form expires after 20 days. Well guess what, my attempts to intercept the form (catch the mailman as he’s opening my mailbox and stuffing it) have led to me opening USPS’ letter with the second form and finding out it’s expired. I am on my 3rd attempt to change his address.
So, remember how I visited the post office this past Monday? After the staff member shuffled through the clipboard covered in receipt paper and told me my key wasn’t ready, I asked if there was anyone else I could talk to, so she got her manager. The manager told me she has no idea when my mail key will be ready, “it could be years” (HER WORDS NOT MINE), because there’s only THREE people in the city responsible for changing mailbox locks and replacing mailbox keys.
She then told me to stop my mail and just start picking it up at the post office. So I filled out the forms and did it. But guess what, the mailman hasn’t taken the weeks worth of mail stuck in my mailbox out and brought it back to the post office so I can collect it yet. The post office staff told me that they “don’t know when it’ll get brought back” or “if it will get brought back” and “they can’t say for sure”.
SO. Weeks worth of important mail that’s got banking info, tax forms, death benefit info, probate documents from the court and every other important thing is now TRAPPED in my fucking mailbox and there is ZERO guarantee that USPS is going to bring it back to the post office so I can collect it. Furthermore, I can’t fucking sell my dad’s house because I can’t change his fucking address. AND I MAY NOT BE BE ABLE TO USE MY MAILBOX FOR YEARS!!!!
How the fuck is any of this legal? How the fuck does something like this even happen??? Who can I talk to to fix it??? Am I basically completely fucked/ unable to do anything until USPS decides that my pain has quenched their sick sadistic thirst for suffering???