Customer Service At Its Worst

No one likes bad customer service, and some might say the U.S. Postal Service has been unfairly maligned in this regard. However, in the six years since returning to Minnesota, the Woodbury, MN Post Office has taken bad customer service to an entirely new level of ineptness.

I was expecting a certified letter that required my signature. Assumptions are never a good thing, but I did believe this meant the postal carrier would come to our door for said signature. The mail truck was chugging up our street at 2:30 so I went outside. I should have stood waiting at our mail box, but honestly, I thought our carrier would actually stop long enough to make an effort.

When he didn’t stop at our mail box, I assumed the letter wasn’t in today’s mail. Opening the mail box, the first thing I saw was a card heralding, “Sorry We Missed You”. So now I’m running down our street, waving my arms frantically to get the carrier’s attention. Every time I catch up, he hits the gas and takes off. After a half block I reach the truck yelling at the top of my lungs for him to please stop. He starts up AGAIN, and I’m running alongside the truck, banging on the window.

Only then does the postal carrier stop. When I tell him he has a certified letter for me that I’ve been waiting all day for, he replies without making eye contact, “Oh, sorry about that”. I sign and get the letter HE HAS WITH HIM IN THE TRUCK and say again, “You know, I arranged my whole day around being available to sign for this letter.” Not a word.

I can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that this mail carrier had no intention whatsoever of getting out of his truck so see if someone was in fact home, waiting for an important piece of certified mail. The Woodbury Post Office has proven itself again and again as tops in bad customer service (yelling at customers, giving out the wrong information, closing stations when the lines extends out the door), but I’m still in shock. I stopped going to the local post office years ago to avoid this kind of hassle, which is the best I can do. They say a person is their own Better Business Bureau, I only wish I could avoid the post office permanently.