What is the name of your state? California.
My sister and I have a small business in which we design and sew clothes and costumes at home and ship them to our customers. We began this business while living in Los Angeles County where postal employees were used to high volumes of mail and handled our parcels very professionally.
Our problems began when we purchased a home in this small town. There is only one United States Post Office in this town and the employees seem unfamiliar with common procedures. The clerks in the office refuse to scan parcels upon acceptence and become argumentative when asked for receipts--even for express and insured parcels. It is a great concern to us that our merchandise may get lost in the mail as they are often very costly and take many weeks to complete. And if we had no proof of mailing--either a mailing receipt or entry in the Postal System computer--the post office will reject insurance claims and our customers may suspect us of fraud should the items be lost.
It only takes approximately 1 second to scan and item. The employee puts the barcode on the label under a scanner and it shows up on the computer. The postal clerk refuses to do this even when there are no other customers waiting in line. She would rather stand there and argue with us that "they said I don't have to scan it."
Our frequent requests for scanning and receipts and appealing to USPS when our packages were not scanned as promised have earned us the hostility of the manager and one clerk. They have made up some silly war of their own to stop us from "getting our way", being hostile when we enter the post office and ordering those assisting us to not do as we ask. The situation became so unpleasant that we began scheduling mail pick-up through the USPS website to avoid going into the post office (the carriers are very nice). Now those in the office keep making up new rules contrary to those stated by USPS in order to refuse our packages. The most recent development is the manager forbidding us from giving parcels to the mail carrier without prior permission from the office (USPS specifically says on the website and mailing instructions on the pre-paid postage labels that parcels can be handed to the carrier). It is getting nastier everyday and we worry that further complaints to USPS will engender more hostility and cause the employees to sabotage our business by refusing to take parcels (we are under pressure to meet deadlines set by shows and events of our customers) or deliberately losing our parcels because we have no proof if they do not enter them in the system. We fear that if we complain further, the manager will forbid the carrier from taking any packages from us on some made-up grounds. We are quite young, only been in business 15 months, and cannot afford to have business trouble.
This town is very small and only began rapid development very recently. I believe the postal employees resent the extra work and feel that we are taking advantage of them by shipping so many items (for which we pay a lot of postage). I also wonder if there is some discrimination on the part of the office clerk because we are of Asian decent and she is an older caucasion living in a remote area.
I would like to know what we can say to USPS to prevent further attempts to harm our business. Complaints only make the employees angry. Are they in breech of any laws or policies that we may threaten to report should things continue as they are or become worse?
My sister and I have a small business in which we design and sew clothes and costumes at home and ship them to our customers. We began this business while living in Los Angeles County where postal employees were used to high volumes of mail and handled our parcels very professionally.
Our problems began when we purchased a home in this small town. There is only one United States Post Office in this town and the employees seem unfamiliar with common procedures. The clerks in the office refuse to scan parcels upon acceptence and become argumentative when asked for receipts--even for express and insured parcels. It is a great concern to us that our merchandise may get lost in the mail as they are often very costly and take many weeks to complete. And if we had no proof of mailing--either a mailing receipt or entry in the Postal System computer--the post office will reject insurance claims and our customers may suspect us of fraud should the items be lost.
It only takes approximately 1 second to scan and item. The employee puts the barcode on the label under a scanner and it shows up on the computer. The postal clerk refuses to do this even when there are no other customers waiting in line. She would rather stand there and argue with us that "they said I don't have to scan it."
Our frequent requests for scanning and receipts and appealing to USPS when our packages were not scanned as promised have earned us the hostility of the manager and one clerk. They have made up some silly war of their own to stop us from "getting our way", being hostile when we enter the post office and ordering those assisting us to not do as we ask. The situation became so unpleasant that we began scheduling mail pick-up through the USPS website to avoid going into the post office (the carriers are very nice). Now those in the office keep making up new rules contrary to those stated by USPS in order to refuse our packages. The most recent development is the manager forbidding us from giving parcels to the mail carrier without prior permission from the office (USPS specifically says on the website and mailing instructions on the pre-paid postage labels that parcels can be handed to the carrier). It is getting nastier everyday and we worry that further complaints to USPS will engender more hostility and cause the employees to sabotage our business by refusing to take parcels (we are under pressure to meet deadlines set by shows and events of our customers) or deliberately losing our parcels because we have no proof if they do not enter them in the system. We fear that if we complain further, the manager will forbid the carrier from taking any packages from us on some made-up grounds. We are quite young, only been in business 15 months, and cannot afford to have business trouble.
This town is very small and only began rapid development very recently. I believe the postal employees resent the extra work and feel that we are taking advantage of them by shipping so many items (for which we pay a lot of postage). I also wonder if there is some discrimination on the part of the office clerk because we are of Asian decent and she is an older caucasion living in a remote area.
I would like to know what we can say to USPS to prevent further attempts to harm our business. Complaints only make the employees angry. Are they in breech of any laws or policies that we may threaten to report should things continue as they are or become worse?
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