Last year, we received a letter from the county tax collector, assessing us a $500+ fine for late payment of property tax. Made no sense to us, but the letter inluded a photocopy of the envelope we had sent, showing a postmark of January, when we had mailed the payment in November. Our check was dated in November, and because we personally drop our mail in the outdoor box at the post office, it couldn't have been lost anywhere EXCEPT at the post office
We objected mightily to this injustice. The tax office originally was unsympathetic, and so was the postmaster. He actually had the nerve to point out that we had never complained in the past about delivery problems, and implied this meant we had no reason to complain now. My husband wrote a long, pointed letter listing some of the MANY times we had experienced weird and inconvenient problems with our mail delivery. We had just not considered it worthwhile to complain much about it when it happened.
Months later, we received an unexpected refund of the tax penalty from the county, which probably was based on my husband 's letter noting our many decades of prompt tax payments, his insistence that it was not our fault that the check was postmarked and received months too late, and all the times our mail has been screwed up in the past .
We are now making payments online to avoid this disaster in the future.
Then there was the certified mail sent to us by our attorney that was simply placed in our mailbox the next day, with the signature card attached but after no effort by the postal carrier to have us personally sign for this important piece of mail. That certified mailing cost the attorney (and of course, us, because it was included in his fee) a whopping $10 for absolutely no extra service or special handling.
And then there was the gift card from LL Bean that I ordered for someone, way in advance of Christmas. It showed up in my mailbox the following AUGUST!!! Of course, I had already called LL Bean a few days before Christmas, wondering where the card was. They didn't know but simply canceled it and sent me another one. That first card had mysteriously floated around somewhere before reaching our address eight months later.
Delivery sometimes means "non-delivery", and I've become convinced that some mail gets buried deep within the post office building and doesn't emerge from a hiding place for a long time.
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