I moved a little over a month ago. I'm currently living with my wife's parents. During this time, we've been having our mail forwarded to our new house. However, as a graduate student, I'm constantly ordering books from amazon. I've been having these shipped to my in-laws' house because, you know, I have to read them. Well, my last order, I accidentally forgot to choose my in-laws' address and I left the Shipping Address as the Billing Address (my checking account was still linked to my old address at the time of purchase). I didn't worry about it, however, because I knew it was being shipped via USPS, so the mail would just be forwarded to my new address...or so I thought.
I usually give my purchases from amazon, especially the independent sellers, 10 days before I start checking up on the location because most items are sent book rate because they're, well, books. I also tend to order them in groups, and I slowly read through the batch I've ordered. Well, last week, about two weeks after the initial order, I noticed I was missing a book. I went back through my book order, found the tracking number, typed it in, and discovered that it was "delivered to unit May 9." Curious, I went to the post office, waited in line, gave them the tracking number, and told to wait a couple days while they contacted the postal carrier to see if he knew what happened to it. I was promised a phone call with an answer. As a fairly patient man, I gave them the better part of five days. Yesterday, I went back to post office, spoke to the same representative that I spoke with before, went through the same routine, and was promised that the supervisor was on the phone right now but that I would absolutely be getting a phone call (yeah, deja vu). Unsurprisingly, I did not get a phone call. I returned to the post office today, with my confirmation number in tow, and spoke to a different representative. I gave her the same story (the previous rep was next to her; he validated that I was promised a call yesterday). She went to the back, came back three minutes later, and told me the supervisor would be out to talk with me personally. After a 10 minute wait, I relayed my story again to the supervisor, who asked me for the tracking number again, and she disappeared for 10 minutes to look up the status of the package. She came back with a series of printouts (that I had seen twice before) that said, "Delivered to Unit May 9." She informed me that if the package was forwarded, it should have been scanned, and she would call the downtown post office to see if they had it. She returned 10 minutes later, telling me that the downtown office didn't have it. She said she had to check with the carrier, but she was pretty sure that he wouldn't know anything else. However, she said that since the item in question was "pressed media," she was pretty sure it wouldn't be forwarded. I asked why not, and she said that the postage for pressed media was not large enough to include forwarding, something that the mailer was most likely aware of (but I was not; otherwise, I would have notified the seller). I asked what happened to items that weren't forwarded, and she said they were put in the trash. So while she was not saying that's what happened, she said that was likely what happened.
Seriously? Am I the only person who didn't know that the Post Office can just throw your mail away? How come personally addressed items get thrown away, but I get countless "current resident" coupons for Domino's Pizza? If anyone has dealt with this before, do I have any recourse?
Cross-posted at http://filibusted.net