Standing On My Head Again
By James D. Umbach, AICP
August 3, 2025
Copyright (C) 2025 James D. Umbach, AICP. Not for distribution.
Oh, look, a package in the mailbox! Who doesn’t love that?
Not this one again!! Aaargh!!
A while back, I mailed an item to my mother-in-law in California. I use the stamps.com service, which handles the postage for me—all I have to do is print out the label and tape it on.
So, all was good as I dropped the package in the mail, raised the flag, and let the United States Postal Service do its thing.
A few days later, Mom called and stated she never got the package. Your Columnist thought that was odd, since he had mailed it just days before. He went home to check it out, opened the mailbox, and there it was, returned. The postage was correct for the weight, but apparently because the package was “not rigid” it needed additional postage. OK, well, that’s a new one on me, but I looked it up in the Domestic Mail Manual (yes, there really is such a thing, and it’s exactly what it sounds like—a manual for how any mail within the U.S. is handled), and, sure enough, a package that is not rigid needs extra postage.
So, I went back to my postage software, slapped the extra postage on, and . . .
. . . a few days later, the package was back again, this time marked “insufficient postage,” even though I had added exactly as much as was requested.
At this point, it was time to actually go talk to someone at the post office that serves our neighborhood, so Wifey and I got in the car and drove down there. It turns out that when I added the new postage, that “cancelled out” the original postage, so it had to be entirely re-franked. Gaaa!!
That made no sense to me, but finally, we were able to explain the issue to a supervisor at the station, who said she would go ahead and waive that “this time.” For the third time in as many weeks, the package was on its way over the mountain, and it did eventually reach its destination in suburban Sacramento. I think it would have been far easier to have just shot it over the mountain in a cannon by that point.
Long-time readers know that my experiences with the United States Postal Service have been, in general, positive, and when there have been issues, they have been taken care of reasonably. That’s the key to customer service: take charge of mistakes, do what you can to make it right, and find a solution to prevent it from happening again.
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Speaking of “generally positive” experiences, the December 3, 1862 issue of the New York Times—speaking right in the middle of the Civil War—reports that the latest report of Postmaster General Montgomery Blair is a good one. “Not for twenty years has the Post Office Department promised so fairly to become self supporting,” the article reads. The department is “one of the least showy, least ambitious branches of our Government. It abounds in hard work and in minute and endless details . . .the country owes some recognition of such services.” The postal system has been an independent agency for decades and is in no danger of showing a profit anytime soon, but the sentiment remains.
If you have any comments about this week’s (or any) column, you can reach me at
umbachjd@yahoo.com. Unless you are an obvious troll (and none of you are), I write back!
