A (legal) question about Mail Boxes, mail, ups, etc

Okay.

I live in a pretty rough neighborhood and we have a large (locked) fence that surrounds our yard. Our mailbox sticks out through the fence, and the house itself is several hundred feet away from the fence.

Because it's Christmastime, and because we get alot of things shipped, we try to keep the front gate unlocked for UPS/Fed-Ex, etc, but we're not always home when they come by, and we always lock the gate when we're away.

The other day, UPS came by when we weren't home and put one of those sticky notes on the front gate. That usually works, but it's very cold and windy here and the note blew away into the tree inside the yard. I didn't even know UPS had been by until the guy came by the next day and I found the note in the tree.

I asked the UPS guy if, during the winter, they could put the notes inside the mailbox so they don't blow away, and he said no, that it was against the law to put anything in the mailbox that isn't USPS mail.

Okay, I guess. I don't really understand that because we didn't buy our mailbox from the post office--we got it at Lowes. So I asked our mail carrier if it would be okay if I put a note on the mailbox expressly allowing non-mail to be in my mailbox during the windy winter months. He said no way, it was against the law, and that if he came by and saw a UPS sticker, or box, or Fed-Ex envelope inside the mailbox, he has the LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY to turn that company into the Postmaster General and fine them for something or other.

So, knowing that we get alot of packages, adn knowing it's absolutely not safe for packages to be left on our step, and knowing that any UPS or FedEx stickers that are put on the fence will either fall off because the fence is frozen or blow away because of the wind, I asked the mailman if I could construct a box that wasn't a "mail box" but a "Package AND mail box" for all my mail AND package notes to go in.

He said that it's against the law to deposit mail into any recepticle that isn't certified by the USPS, yar yar yar.

So my question is:

Why is this legal? Is my post office guy setting me straight? Is there really no way for me to be able to (legally) get non-mail things put in my mailbox legally?

If the mailman can't put mail into non-USPS certified mailboxes (and I see that my mailbox does have USPS on it),how can they deliver mail to people's front door with the slots? THose just have "post" or "mail"--not USPS like my streetside box does.

This seems really silly. I guess I could understand if I was 'renting' the box from the post office. But I'm not. I bought the damn box, and even according to this post guy, I couldn't MAKE a mailbox, it would have to be purchased and "certified" in order for mail to be delivered in it. Now I"m sure I've seen people that have made mailboxes before.

Is this guy giving me the shaft? How can I make sure I get my UPS slippy-things without having to hunt through the trees every day (or god forbid they fly into the street) if they can't go into the mailbox?

as far as i know :)

How can they get away with telling me what I can and can't do with a peice of property that I bought and that's on my property?

Good thing my mail guy is nice, or else I would have to be REEELY mad :D

You need to provide the mailbox to receive the mail. It is for USPS use only.


Ask your UPS guy to come up and put the note on your door. If you're leaving the gate open this should work.

but we live in a crappy neighborhood. Someone stole the canister to our canister vaccuum a few months ago. Why? I suppose because it wasn't tied down and cemented to the lawn :shrug:

I hate leaving the gate open when we're not around because...oh...I can't even think of how badly our house would be damaged. The reason we have the fence is that without it, the house was getting "tagged" every day, windows broken, things stolen, plants uprooted, etc. So it's in our best interest (and our landlord's best interest) to have the gate locked when we're not around. I have no inclination to attempt to paint over graffiti (excuse me---some people on this board refer to the nonsensicial taggings as Legitimate Displays Of Urban Art and Civil Disobedience that I should be happy to have adorn my rental house :eyes: ) in the middle of winter.

Maybe I'll put an envelope or something on the gate for UPS/Fed Ex.

It just seems silly that it's MY mailbox, so if I want to plant gardenias in it, I should be able to. I'm not renting it from the post office. I appreciate the USPS---great rates for the service, etc, but I think their restrictions over what I can do with my mailbox on my property is a bit over the top.

And put something that says "Other deliveries"? Or something similar.

It all goes back to Congress. They decided that they didn't want the USPS to have to compete for mail service and gave them a legal monopoly on carrying letters (everyone else carries "packages", but in the US only the USPS can carry "letters"). To get mail service from the government, you have to provide them with an approved box for their use. If you use that box for anything other than mail, it's no longer considered a "mail box" and the carrier won't deliver to it. It sucks, but that's the law...your mailbox can only be used as a mailbox if you dedicate it to the USPS. If you refuse to do that, your options are to get a PO Box or forgoe mail delivery entirely (they'll hold it for you at your local post office and you can pick it up periodically).

I live in a rural neighborhood, and many of my neighbors have homes that are set far back from the road behind gates. Most of them have "Delivery Boxes" below their mail boxes that USPS and FedEx can use to drop stuff off. My nutty neighbor has a cool one that has a mechanical weight trigger inside...if you put something inside of it and close the door it will lock, but when it's empty you can open and close it all day long. The only problem he's had with it are from the neighborhood cats. If the door doesn't get shut all the way, the cats climb inside of it to get out of the wind and rain. If the door closes all the way, their weight will keep it from opening again. Luckily it ALSO has a big indicator on it so he knows when there's something inside.

We thought about a box but thought it would be too easy for someone to reach in and just steal whatever's inside.

That sounds really cool!

and stick Fed Ex in there too.

So use an "other" box for the notices, but be really specific about what it's for. Label both boxes...

That's a good solution... it's a pain in the ass, but workable.

We routinely distribute neighborhood flyers in mailboxes.
Usually announcements about upcoming parties at our little clubhouse.

Alfalfa was my invisible friend. We even had a place at the table for him.

My family looks back on it longingly. I'm kinda creeped out by it. :D

Shades of Andy hardy.
;-)

like between the flag and the box, but not IN the box. Some boxes have slots underneath without a door for newspapers, fliers and stuff, but if you put non USPS stuff IN the box, your organization could, technically be fined.

i know that if you stick a note in someones mailbox the mailman can take it and it will come back to the mailbox owing postage.

the post office has their own particular brand of nonsense. i got a warning from my mailman last year because there was some ice on my sidewalk. the sun had melted some of the 18" of snow and it refroze. this was not an unshoveled walk. so i get a very official notice telling me that my mail will not be delivered because of the presence of "dangerous conditions".

here's the annoying part. the mailman leaves my porch, crosses my driveway and my neighbors driveway, climbs up and over a big pile of shoveled snow onto the neighbors yard and walks through the snow to my neighbors porch...instead of walking on the sidewalk. so, when its convienient for him he can trudge through ice and snow but can't possibly traverse the ice on my shoveled and salted sidewalk when the whole state is buried under snow.

i wondered if its because i don't tip, but i asked and my neighbors don't either.

I've never heard of that. THat's bullshit. I'm a nurse--no one tips me (and no, shitting on the bed right after I cleaned it is not my idea of a "tip")

Anyway, I think we're going to do some kidn of plastic envelope or folder attached to the fence to slip the slips in. My UPS guy is great. I'd tip HIM. He's nice. The mailman is okay, but he always rolls his eyes b/c of the junk mail we get--hey, man, I didn't sign up for the shit!!! Also, I don't think he likes the fact that we get about 8 magazine subscriptions a month. But I get them for free AND we donate them to my school and my hospital when we're done reading them.

The other day, I was outside and the mailman came by wearing shorts. It's 20 degrees outside. He puts the mail in the box and makes some shitty comment about how he can't wait to get done because it's so miserable outside. I'm thinking "you moron. Put on some fucking pants like a normal human and you won't be uncomfortable. *I* didn't make your ass wear shorts today"

which, i learned recently, they aren't allowed to keep, especially cash. when i first moved in someone told me to "take care of him" right away so he'd do me favors. like you, i thought, wtf? what "favors" can a mailman do for me. apparently he can stop delivering my mail when he finds "dangerous conditions".

i should have pointed out that the warning came soon after christmas.

you don't want back in the box with "Refusing Delivery" on it. If it's junk, then it's gets thrown away, if it's 2nd class stuff like magazines, weeklies, crap from Jerry Falwell, etc...it gets sent back to the organization postage due.

She refused to deliver when there was about two inches of snow by the mailboxes. She told me that she won't deliver if the area by the box isn't cleared so she could drive up to it. I told her, "You CAN drive up to it. You drive a 4 wheel drive Toyota pickup and it's only about 2 inches of snow. Anyone who drives on it will pack it down so it's nonexistent."

She replied, "I'm not going to pack your snow for you." :banghead:

and sometimes delivered our mail to our neighbors, and neighbors mail to us....my wife went to the PO and complained...they postmaster made our delivery person come out and personally apologize.

and I think our mailman is just lazy. We live in apartment A, and I think any time there's a letter that doesn't have an apartment number on it, it gets stuck in our box. I always have to call the landlord and track the person down to give him/her his/her mail.

We don't get much ice here though. :D

You might be able to construct a small box strictly for the UPS slips and attach it to your fence. Check with the UPS guy and see if he'll put your slips in there.

or something attached to the fence, so they can slip it in there and it won't blow away or get wet or whatever.

We had several mailbox bashings, right after we put up new boxes after the old ones had been knocked down by a car. (We had about 5 boxes in a row.) So after our nice new boxes were bashed (I think some mail was missing or dumped on the ground as well) I went to the post office to report it. The postmaster said, "Not our problem, call the Sheriff. Once the mail is placed in the box it's your responsibility. The box is your property, not the P.O.'s." I said, "Well I guess I can use it for a drop point for other things then." He started shaking his head and I said, "Nuh huh, you can't have it both ways." He shut up and I've since used my box for a drop off for various things with no protest from the P.O.

I don't think that would work in a city situation, but I know al the guys/gals at my local rural P.O. and we basically live and let live.

in SEattle. We lived in an apartment building that had the big mail-box boxes outside the apartment building and everyone has their own individual box.

We were expecting a package from my mother, and were waiting and waiting--I didn't know if it would fit in one of the larger-sized parcel boxes there, or if they'd leave the note to pick it up at the PO.

So after about 2 weeks, I called my mom and told her the pkg hadn't come yet. She checks online and it shows the pkg was delivered the previous week. I went to the PO, and said that my mom mailed a package, it's showing confirmed delivery, we never got it, etc.

THe guy behind the counter says "Well, I know you got it. I delivered it"

I was confused because
1) this guy didn't know our name
2) didn't know our address

So I asked him how he could possibly know he delivered it considering he didn't know where we lived or who we were.

He said 'Well, I don't get that many packages. I remembered delivering a package to you. I don't have to know your name or address. I knwo I delivered it. It's not my responsiblity" and just walked away. We stood there for about 15 minutes and he never came back.

Finally got a supervisor who was equally rude, and outright suggested that we were lying in an attempt to collect the insurance money on the pacakge because "You people always do this during Christmastime. We're not stupid. You got that package and YOU know it and *I* know it"

I was FUMING. We went home, and were getting ready to write a letter to the Postmaster General about the shitty way we were treated AND that we were called liars and crooks TO OUR FACES.

Well, that day we go down to check the mail and what do we see in our box? Why, it's a package. From my mom. That was delivered to some people THREE BLOCKS AWAY with a completely different address. THEY had come to our apartment and we weren't home (arguing with the PO), and contacted the landlord who had a key to the box and put it in our box.

I was SO pissed. Fuckin mailmen :)

Since I live in a rural area, we've had problems with that several times. One of my neighbors came up with an idea that worked brilliantly: Fill the mailbox with bricks :) Every time we lose a mailbox to a smasher, we keep bricks in the replacement for a week or two. Our carrier is in on it and doesn't complain (we don't completely fill it, so there's room for the mail), and it's worked wonders. Twice now we've come back to find the first box on our block partially smashed, and we found chunks of wood (probably from a baseball bat) around it both times. They swung at it expecting the empty aluminum box to give, but instead met with a far more painful experience!

Friend of mine got tired of replacing his mailbox so he got a PO Box. Then he bought a brand new mailbox and filled it with cement. It wasn't a week when someone attacked it. There was a tiny little dent on the box and on the ground, broken wood from the baseball bat and broken auto glass!

Wow, that's better than bricks! With the brick box, the one to get hit still gets trashed, but it's the ONLY one to get trashed. We were talking about permanently mounting a target dummy box at the end of the block to save that one, but we never got around to it. I'll have to bring up the concrete mailbox at our next neighborhood watch meeting :)

I always wondered what went through the bashers mind when they hit those bricks :)

"I always wondered what went through the bashers mind when they hit those bricks"

A lot of vibration, I would guess.
(See my other concrete solution obove.)

It requires a small mailbox and a large mailbox. Put the small one inside the large one and fill the space around the edges with concrete.

I saw another solution on the road to Santa Rosa. Someone filled plactic milk jugs with water and hung them (saddlebag style) over the mailbox. Works to deter drive-by bashings, but can be defeated if the basher takes some time.

Let me get this straight:

The mailbox is YOUR property and YOUR responsibility.

But you can't use it for other things at your own discretion...

How is using YOUR property at YOUR discretion "having it both ways"?

Kinda sounds like THEY are trying to have it both ways, requiring that you keep a piece of YOUR property for THEIR exclusive use...

My statement was indeed that they were trying to have it both ways.

And coming from YOU it makes perfect sense. Had it been them, OTOH...

After this happened for the upteenth time to my grandmothers mailbox my father got a large metal pipe to put the box on and then took that pipe and buried it in 2 feet of permacrete.

About a month later someone tried to run over it again with their truck... lmao they hit it so hard they almost ripped the whole thing, pipe and the cement stuck to it on the bottom clear out of the ground. I doubt the truck faired well.

For the next 10 years until my grandmother passed nobody ever messed with her mailbox.

felony charges.

You can, however, ask that your UPS packages be held at a nearby UPS terminal for pick up

Your mistake was to ask about making a bigger box for mail AND UPS stuff.

Keep your mailbox, and build a bigger box for UPS packages, and include in it a lock and let the UPS guy know that, if he desposits anything into the UPS box, he should then also use the lock to lock it up.