A PARTIAL SOLUTION FOR ADDRESS PROBLEMS AT OUR POST OFFICE
A number of Palisades post office box holders have been frustrated and upset recently by a change in policy at our post office. All of us try to insure that our correspondents send mail addressed to our PO boxes, but there are always a few letters sent to our street address instead. Some of this is due to ignorance, and some is due to regulations that forbid mail to be sent to post office boxes by some organizations.
In the past staff at the Palisades post office usually put the letters with street addresses in the right box, if they knew what it was, and we were grateful to them. But during the last six months most letters with street addresses instead of PO box numbers have been returned to the sender, in some cases causing serious problems to the recipients who did not receive them. Checks, driver's licenses, car registrations and other important documents have failed to arrive on time due to this new policy.
Post office staff has explained that new regulations are causing this problem and have been unable to come up with a solution. Application of the new policy has been inconsistent; some mail with a street address arrives but most does not. A search of the US postal service site has come up with a partial solution, although it still entails extra work for all of us. The relevant section is below.
FROM THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE SITE
"How is mail with two (2) addresses handled?
"The intended delivery address should always be placed on the line immediately above the city, state, and ZIP Code™ line. If necessary, the additional address should be placed on a line above the intended delivery address line.
"When a mailpiece consists of both a street address and a Post Office™ Box address on two (2) lines, the United States Postal Service® priority will be to attempt delivery to the address immediately above the city, state, and ZIP Code. The ZIP Code on the mailpiece should correspond to this address.
"If a street address and a PO Box address are placed on the same line, the US Postal Service will attempt delivery to the PO Box address. In this example, the ZIP Code on the mailpiece should correspond to the PO Box address.
"In the following example, the mail would be delivered to the PO Box address:
"JOHN W DOE
222 WALL ST STE 500
PO BOX 985
NEW YORK NY 21212-2222"
In other words, there can be two addresses on a letter, as long as the PO box number is located immediately above PALISADES NY 10964 or on the same line as the street address. This means that each PO box holder must notify the government agencies and organizations that refuse to send mail to PO boxes alone and ask them to include the PO box number either on the same line as the street address or just above the line with the state and zip code.
The perfect solution would be to go back to the old system, where PO staff put the letters in the right boxes if they knew the recipients, no matter how they were addressed, but time marches on. At least we now understand what the postal regulations are.