Before our trip to Santa Fe we heard an advertisement by the USPS (formerly the Post Office) about how you could go online and forward your mail. No muss no fuss. So we tried it and we have some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that everybody at the post office was really helpful. All of the staff were friendly and genuinely cared about our mail.

The bad news is that the system for forwarding mail is archaic, slow and failed miserably.

On about September 25 we put in a forwarding notice at our local post office. It turns out that it couldn’t be done online. We asked that the mail be forwarded to our address in Santa Fe for all of October. On the first of October Pete our local mail carrier stopped delivering to our house. It was more than a week before any of the mail started arriving in Santa Fe and a week after that before we started to get any of it. The second weeks delay was a result of our not having the key to the USPS mail delivery box at our rental house. After that we got some first class mail but not all of it and none of our magazines.

About mid October we decided to cancel the forwarding order and have our house sitter vet the mail and forward the important stuff. Every attempt we made failed. We failed at the Santa Fe Post Office and at the Pasadena Post Office. We filled out three forms and even got an acknowledgement. But the mail kept going into postal purgatory.
A few days after we got home we talked to Pete, our carrier. Yes he had two tubs of mail for us and he would bring it tomorrow. And he did.

My conclusion is that the people at the post office are very good at their jobs and they care a lot about the mail but the systems aren’t very good. The postal workers know this so they build alternative back door solutions to get the mail delivered.

My recommendation is that you get to know your carrier and be sure to communicate directly with them and don’t believe the ads.