I love the USPS and I especially love the people who work there!!! They have such a hard job and they are my most trusted business partner to be honest. I had an odd experience today but that experience doesn't change that.

On Jan 16, I went to my local post office looking to pick up my held mail. My mail hold ended on Jan. 13. I thought that I had up until Jan 23 to pick up my mail based on this webpage which says

There is a 10 day period in which to pick up mail at the end of a USPS Hold Mail service request. If not picked up by this deadline, it will be returned to sender.

I could be misinterpreting, but again I thought that meant that I had until Jan. 23 to come get it.

However, the person at the post office said that this was false. They said that I had until Jan. 13 or Jan. 14 to pick up my mail, not Jan. 23. Since I didn't show up by then, they said that my mail would have been returned to sender. Is that how this is supposed to work?

Since they are the boss of my post office, I assume that's how it works at my post office. That's fine, now I know.

Maybe that's how it works at every post office; maybe that USPS webpage is wrong, it applies to something different, or they meant something different by "the end of a USPS Hold Mail service request."

Fortunately, this had a happy ending: when I got home from the post office, I found that they had delivered my accumulated mail to my address!! (It was not there when I left.)

I submit Hold Mail requests a few times per year on the USPS website with seemingly no issues and a confirmation generated (duration is about a week or two). But each time, the mail is still delivered to my address during the hold period. I figured if it was once that it was some sort of miscommunication that would resolve within a day, but it continued for multiple days. I submit a support ticket and call general customer service for a resolution and get a call from the local post office after a few days (or longer) apologizing and saying they will hold as directed from now on (meanwhile the mail kept being delivered until they called me and some of it gets lost/destroyed due to overstuffed box and wind/weather,etc).

General question: could someone help me understand how the Mail Hold process works from the time mail enters the local post office to when it finally gets delivered to my mailbox on the end date of the hold?

How I think it works: mail arrives at local post office and is sorted to individual bags/boxes/trucks for the carrier to deliver the next morning, carrier arrives next morning and goes on the route with a specific list of addresses to *not* deliver to, at the end of the route the mail for these *hold* addresses are returned to the local PO where it is filed away, this process repeats each day until the end date, then the local PO packages this mail into an appropriate package/bag/etc and the carrier delivers on the end date to the house/mailbox.

The rep from the local PO who called me back says this issue is because the carrier is not the same person each day and they don't have a way to tell every new carrier for each day whether to hold or not. This doesn't make sense to me though. Shouldn't this be the responsibility of the local PO to make the carrier's job clear and consistent?

How I think it *should* work: mail arrives at local post office and is sorted to individual bags/boxes/trucks for the carrier to deliver the next morning, if the sorting machine sees my address on mail pieces it funnels it to a separate area at the local PO where it is filed away until the end date (no carrier ever touches this mail!), this process repeats each day until the end date, then the local PO packages this mail into an appropriate package/bag/etc and the carrier delivers on the end date to the house/mailbox.

Does anyone have any insight on how this works? Have you seen this scenario before? Any suggestions on how it can be better managed? Much appreciated and thank you for your service!

On three separate occasions I've requested a mail hold, received confirmation on the USPS website, and all three times my mail gets delivered as normal. The third time, I put the hold in online, then went down to the office to confirm it; they said they "didn't see it", so they had me fill out a paper form right there. Didn't matter.

What should I do differently?

EDIT: so it sounds like my best bet is to speak directly with my carrier. Thank you for the constructive feedback.