Snail mail fail
Here’s yet another another example of why monopolies are no good for customers.
My wife and I recently moved and prepared to change our address with the Post Office, a routine practice of getting a form, filling it out, and dropping it in the slot. Or so we thought.
Yeah, right.
I went online and discovered that an electronic change of address costs $1, charged to one’s credit card for verification. I find that dubious at best, since the old method sent a card to your house as verification; neither quick nor secure. The $2 fee isn’t a huge cost, but the previous process was free and it rankled me to have to pay for it now.
I work near the post office, so instead I strolled over one day to put ink to paper as I have for years.
These days, change of address forms in the lobby have all been replaced with flyers directing people online. I asked an employee about the old forms and he told me it was all done electronically now. “What about people without a computer?” I asked. He looked at me like I just slapped his mother.
Back at the computer, I found a loophole that allows customers to print the change of address and take it to the post office at no charge.
I went back to the post office to deliver my printed forms and, when I commented that the post office seemed to be passing the cost of printing on to customers, a different employee said they had plenty of the old forms, but were, “instructed to hide them behind the counter like pornography.”
Crazy.
On the last day in our apartment, I ran into the mail carrier and asked him why we were still getting mail there, not getting mail at our new address and had never received a confirmation of the change. This change was all news to him and — surprise — handed me one of the old forms to fill out. Apparently, my home-printed forms had hit the circular file.
So I begrudgingly paid the dollar (actually two — one each for Kristi and I — because previous efforts to change our address as a “family” ended up with us getting junk mail addressed to my parents. More fail.) and waited for mail at the new address.
Ultimately, we lodged a complaint with the postal service for poor performance and for taking our money for nothing.
The post office in Salem called mere days after the complaint was filed to say they were contacting the corvallis office and that we should hear from them in a day or two. Almost a month later, Kristi gets a call.
It gets worse.
Apparently, the caller had a checklist of questions to answer and just wanted yes or no answers. When Kristi was trying to explain what had happened, he asked her “Do you think you can be quiet long enough for me to complete a sentence?”
Seriously.
Now we’re apparently going to get a form to fill out and return in order to be refunded our $2.
This whole thing has cost us and the post office time and money, not to mention the bad taste from having to deal with and be insulted by the bureaucracy of this antiquated and insulated monopoly.
So, to companies considering making a switch to an online process:
- Don’t lie about it.
- If you’re a monopoly, you still need to make arrangements for people who don’t want to do it your way. Deal with it.
- If you’re in a serious deficit, you can’t stand to be alienating customers.
- A customer service note: when you’re trying to make amends, don’t be an asshole.
