Dear Carole:
You probably know that the Post Office is again stamping mail that post office box numbers must be used, and perhaps is again returning mail or packages not so addressed. Stockbridge Updates succeeded in getting this practice stopped when it happened a while ago, and I hope will try to do so again.
This is particularly difficult for packages, since FedEx and UPS will not accept packages including a PO box address, and both frequently “dump” ground transportation items into the mail.
In the past, we were advised that the must-have-box-number policy could be avoided by including the box number in a different way in one’s address — for example, “7 Aspen Street #1234.” We’ve done that, yet today got an envelope so addressed and nonetheless stamped with “The address on this piece is incomplete or incorrect. Please contact sender to correct with address that includes PO Box.”
It was a relief when, earlier, after SU‘s intervention, this practice did stop for a while. That preserved a desirable community meeting place for the town. But now it has resumed. Is there anything SU can do to cause it to halt again? Is it, perhaps, time at last for mail delivery to our homes? Would our postal employees really prefer to come to our homes, rain, sleet or snow notwithstanding? Might they be angling for that opportunity?
Peter Strauss
Dear Peter,
I am elevating your letter to the news section because you raise a vitally important issue. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
Except in Stockbridge…
From the first Postmaster of the United States, Ben Franklin, until May 2020 the United States postal service was a national pride and the envy of the world. During the Trump Administration, the Board of Governors appointed businessman Louis DeJoy the 75th Postmaster of the United States. There were occasional oops! Like when it took one year for a package of mine to be delivered from NYC to Stockbridge. However, look at it this way, it was one year to the day so there is a kind of symmetry if no efficiency. Now glitches in delivery are a daily occurrence. Worse, it is as if swift and efficient delivery is no longer a source of pride or even a goal.
Apparently, we in Stockbridge are between a rock and a hard place. The United States Post Office does not offer us mail delivery. Parts of Stockbridge, for example, Tanglewood and Hawthorne Street have delivery. Most of Stockbridge is reliant on post office boxes in a building on Elm Street. Do what we can about post office box numbers to get delivery from outside, there is a maddening hitch inhouse.
I was told even if I place a stamp, the name, and box number on a piece of mail going from me to another Stockbridge resident, and hand it in at the window — they will not put it in the box. There is no snow or rain or gloom of night to brave in order to walk from the window to the box. Instead, they send it to Springfield so it can go there and come back here and be out in the box.
SU will do its best. You are not the only one who approached us. Cross your fingers but this stuff is odd, and it is not going on next door. In Lenox — yup! — they take the letter, walk over, and put it in the box! They will even tell you the box number if you don’t know it. They scrawl it on an incoming letter or package if it’s missing and deliver it to the recipient!! Just lie Stockbridge did once.
There’s trouble right here: it starts with ‘p’ and that stands for post office. We need to work together to solve it.
Carole
