In article ,
J. Clarke wrote:
Tim Douglass wrote:

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 01:55:09 -0500, Silvan
wrote:

J. Clarke wrote:

The miracle here is that the USPS managed to locate Canada.

I can do one better. I once mailed a postcard to Slovenia, and they
actually got it there. I still don't know where the hell Slovenia is.
Score one for the USPS. Their overall average is still pretty dismal
though.

Statistically, the USPS is one of the most reliable delivery services
in the world. They lose a far smaller percentage of the items
entrusted to them than UPS does, for example.

The problem with them is not that they lose the items, it's that they lose
the destinations. Sent a card to someone I've known for 20 years, living
at the same address for 20 years, it came back "address unknown". Funny
thing, UPS had no trouble finding the same address within a week of the
time that the USPS failed to locate it. And she's still living there years
later.

On the _other_ hand, many years ago, the U.S. Postal Service used to lose
my address, on a *medium-regular* basis. I was in my 1st apartment, and
you can imagine the fun, when my mother sends me a note with _her_ travel
schedule for a trip, gets backs from said trip, only to find the letter in
_her_ mailbox, marked "moved, left no forwarding address". Or, when the
monthly checking-account statement from my bank got similarly returned as
undeliverable -- "no such address".

Now, I was living on this "little" _4-lane_ street, just outside of downtown.
There was a dead-end stub of the street in the low 500s, the stretch
I was on, started in the mid 600s, and went to the 900s. (where the 4-lane
pavement changed direction, and 'migrated' into a different street name)
Where the street 'would have been', there was the Freeway, a major diagonal
feeder road, etc., and the street didn't take up again until about the 1400
block. Further, there weren't _any_ addresses on the East side of that
stretch -- in the 600s, it was the 'back side' of properties that addressed
of the west side of the next street east. The entire 700 block was the
grounds of an elementary school, that addressed off a cross-street. 800s
and up were the back edge a large housing complex, that all addressed of
'internal' streets. Then, on _my_ side of the street, the 800 block was
a park, what there was of the 900s didn't have anything addressing on
it (both properties addressed from the cross-street). this left 3 buildings
in the 700 block, and I think 5 (might have been only 4) old houses in the
600s. Oh yeah, this street is also the boundary-line between ZIP codes.
Now, this same _numbered_ (not 'named') street in the adjacent suburb
("_West_ foo", where I lived in the center-city "foo"), is a very upper-
scale neighborhood. but the street there _starts_ in the 800s. I *know*
that some of the returns were because the mail went to "West Foo", instead
of "Foo" -- the 'undeliverable' marking had the zip-code of the PO that
did the 'return to sender'.

I *finally* found a way to beat the system, however. I started using the
ZIP code for the _other_side_of_the_street_. The one where there weren't
any addresses. Apparently, this routed it to a different P.O., where they
kicked it over to the 'right' one, *but*, by going in the 'back door', it
bypassed 'wherever' the intermittent mis-sorting was happening.

Of course, getting the 'address changes' in with the various places was
an *interesting* task -- call the bank, tell them a 'change of address',
"only the ZIP code is changed". Their computer insists that the ZIP code
I'm giving them is incorrect. Which *is* accurate. I say "I know that,
use it _anyway_." Computers can be *STUBBORN* I think they had to get
programmers involved, to change the programming -- to _allow_ manual input
to over-ride the programmed look-up.