Dreamylife – The Going's on in Beautiful Glade Valley NC

Note: This post has been backdated from the original time it was written to properly provide a context to the posts that follow it;

We had family up for a year end celebration for two ECU graduates so the time for follow up on the initial failed package pickup request was delayed.

I filed the request on 1/3/2023. This post will detail the communications and outcome.

I received as it relates to service request 46521355 the following response from the Post Master of Sparta NC arriving via email on 1/5/2023.

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Good morning Mr. Chaney.

I felt sure that my staff had resolved this issue after my visit to your house. We have no issue picking up your packages when there is a package pickup notice submitted alerting us to the fact that you have packages to be picked up. However, the placement of your mailbox should be at the end of (Redacted), intersecting with (Redacted). Once the box is placed and mail delivery is established we will be glad to drive up and retrieve any packages you have submitted for pickup.

(Redacted)
Postmaster

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Well, you can only imagine how smoking hot I was given this is nowhere near how I thought our conversation ended…..

So my reply was, I thought, restrained and reasonable, but probably in hindsight, not the smartest move given how wordy I get…..

My reply was on 1/5/2023

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Good Evening (Redacted),

Thank you for your timely response to this service request. The entirety of my email gives you the benefit of the doubt as to what was said and what took place.

In follow up to our on-site meeting, and based upon my recollection of what was said at my property, your response in this communication is not what I remember us agreeing would happen. It was my understanding, at the close of our meeting, when I was ready, you would have no issue having packages delivered to our physical location (your office would no longer return packages to sender as is being done now), and you had no issue having packages picked up from our physical location when I submitted a package pickup request. You were not ready at that time to have regular mail delivered to our physical location until such time as you could evaluate the number of trips the route carrier would be making to our location to pick up and deliver Packages. It was my understanding, that the route driver worked for you and that what I thought I heard you say was that you would have no issue “making” the route driver follow these instructions.

The delay for initiation of this agreement on my end was a result of my needing to find a package mailbox large enough to accommodate my album shipments, more as a courtesy to the route driver to minimize the number of times he/her might have to get out of their vehicle to pick up packages from my office porch. I could not get a package mailbox suitable for this purpose locally and had to order one in. Between shipping delays, and the holiday business, it took longer than anticipated. Further, it took more time for me to spread the gravel area in an effort by me to provide an easy location for the driver to turn around. While I still need a to order a little more gravel, it is a usable turnaround location for the driver as is.

I apologize for not returning your phone call, but this falloff in communication is why I requested we communicate in writing via my service request and why I am requesting that all future communication regarding this matter is in writing so as to eliminate any chances of future misunderstanding or confusion on who said what as we move forward in this process.

When we first moved here, after I had our property addressed, I came up to your location in Sparta and asked what I needed to do. I can tell you with certainty that I was told simply all you need to do is “put up a mailbox, let us know when it is up and ready, and we’ll begin mail service”. After cementing a mailbox post 2 feet into the ground and adding a mailbox, I came back to the Sparta location and told the clerk working the counter that my mailbox was up, provided the address and mail began being delivered to our location, for about an entire week. As it turned out, the regular route runner was on vacation at that time. When he returned, that is when mail delivery stopped. We received no notice, and my NC Dept of Revenue sales tax quarterly reporting stayed in my mailbox for a week before I finally got in the truck to drive to your office to find out what was going on. On an side, this is exactly what happened when I put my mail pickup request in Thursday before Christmas last month to have 2 packages picked up – one priority mail – both arrived late to the recipients thanks to someone failing to properly communicate to me. I received NO notification from you or your office that the situation had changed and my packages sat ins sub zero temperatures until we returned from the weekend….with the mail carrier saying no mailbox – when he knows exactly where the mailbox is. I could have carried them down to Wilmington NC and mailed them there had you or your office let me know you changed your decision sooner.

As you have explained, if I heard you correctly, “the Post Office now has a standing policy on Consolidated box locations”. I make assumptions from here, that decision was made in order to save money for the post office as I know residential delivery is a losing proposition as it relates to post office revenue. In speaking with my neighbors, it is my understanding that mailboxes at one point were all located at the beginning of (Redacted) – as per another referenced policy regarding private road delivery. I also understand that your predecessor authorized the change to incorporate the entirety of (Redacted) to address an issue plaguing the area with regards to mail and package theft.

As I have made clear to you in our conversations, my business deals in valuable merchandise to include gold and silver products. These items cannot be safely secured at the end of (Redacted). I cannot place a security surveillance system at the end of (Redacted) to safeguard merchandise being shipped in and out to my business location, regardless of whether it is a keyed box or traditional mailbox. In addition, some days, I have more packages than can fit in even the largest of residential mailboxes designed for packages and I have no interest, nor should I need to, purchase a 500 or multi thousand dollar mailbox just to get service. What I do have located at my office is security in place  to include cameras on the property and at the door to my office building and alarm systems.

Based upon my one and only conversation with the present route driver, at the end of conversation, while he blamed “Management”, I had the impression he had no desire to add my address to his route, it would seem especially so if it required a lot of packages (work). My opinion on this has not changed based upon my referenced paragraph above where the substitute driver had no issue delivering mail to our physical address – on two different occasions. The route driver presently drives exactly 1 mile – one way (2 miles both ways) – to make residential deliveries down (Redacted) – where I doubt there is any business spending thousands of dollars with USPS annually shipping packages, but for some reason, your office is refusing to drive another approximate 800 feet one way to my office building to service my business, and yes, my personal mail requirements.

Like most modern families, we no longer mail or receive a lot of personal mail beyond bank statements – which we could go paper on – and magazine subscriptions, many of which we could go online with. We do receive government communication from both the state and federal systems. Beyond the holidays (we still like to send Christmas cards) and birthdays, the bulk of what is left is junk that we would not miss. The primary mail service needed is commercial in nature for my location, but as customer, I also have expectations given the amount of money I spend, that your office services my personal requirements as well in a thoughtful, and reasonable, manner. Every time I hear about the post office losing money, it is stuff like this that makes me just shake my head….

As I have stated to you, and you saw on your visit, we maintain the road. I have also stated to you, I have no issue if the route driver does not deliver or pickup if the road is unsafe – i.e. we have snow storms here in the mountains and that creates a safety issue. The gravel road must be plowed and cleared before he can safely come up or down, just as it is on (Redacted). We have the equipment to that, though it might not get done until the afternoon or after the snow stops.

Regardless, I have now spent over a year patiently attempting to work with your office to service my business, and personal, physical location in a way that is safe and secure for us as a residential and commercial customer. All of those conversations have been verbal in nature. As I recall, when the mail stopped getting delivered in 2021, with our initial heated conversation, you promised to come up and view our road, and make a determination and that you would call me and let me know what you decided. I waited patiently for months. You never called, and to the best of my knowledge, given we tend to know who comes and goes on our no outlet road, I do not believe a trip was ever made.

All of this began when you were “Acting” post master attempting to get the job you now have, and it now continues with you as the official post master in charge of our area. I do sometimes wonder, given the circumstance we have experienced with your office since moving here, what your predecessor would have decided given the past decision that they made on changing the route so that it incorporated the entirety of (Redacted) – a private road, which the USPS no longer services.

I want to reiterate, in writing, excerpts from our last conversation that I am sure I shared with you. Up until September of 2021, my business was quite active in New Hanover county, having shipped well over 10,000 packages through the life of its business period in Wilmington NC, most of those packages via USPS. When we moved to Glade Valley, I took a hiatus from running my online business in order to take time out to get our new property ready for both living on, and working on. The very first building we completed was my office building. This was so I could continue to run my business once we had the residential side in order. Unfortunately, builders in this area cannot provide a firm price and are still scheduled out over 2 years, so we have yet to be able to build our home….but that is aside the point.

I officially reopened for business in Mid-September of 2022 with the new Glade Valley NC address and began selling product on Etsy and at the beginning of December, I began selling some products on Ebay again. Both are in addition to our company website which was never fully shut down, we just did not market it. Through this year I have shipped over 350 packages outbound, many of them via USPS using first class mail, priority mail and media mail with values ranging from $5.00 to $3000.00, with about 320 of those packages being over the last 90 days. This does not include all of the inbound packages we have coming in that we have to fight around the fact that USPS wants to return anything shipped to our physical location.

As of now, every trip to the post office to deliver packages wastes right about 40 minutes round trip of my day that could be spent investing time in running my business operations. Something your office could resolve with a simple direction from you to begin delivering and picking up mail to our actual physical location. As I have explained to you, even FedEx and UPS pickup and deliver from my office location. Given my customers pay for shipping, I could very easily say no more to USPS and just work something out with UPS or FedEx on all non-media mail shipments. Instead, I continue to try to work with you.

At the end of the day, I feel like I have made a good faith effort to resolve this issue directly with you and your office, thinking twice now, the issue of mail pickup/delivery and package pickup and delivery was resolved. I am really quite exhausted mentally and physically in the ongoing issue of having USPS properly meeting the needs of my home and business delivery and pickup requirements.

With all that said, I want to get this resolved now in a meaningful way that meets my needs, and ends the hamster wheel I feel like I have been on for the last year with your office. If you are unable or unwilling to do that, then I am officially requesting you send this information to you supervisor for further review and guidance. I look forward to hearing from him or her and providing them the documentation that they require to show I am a valuable small business customer for USPS that deserves to be serviced in a manner that helps my small business grow.

Thanks for your time,
George Chaney

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The Post Masters reply was on 1/6/2023 and as my .gov wife said, right in line with how you would expect a .gov response to be, short and to the point…lol

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Good Morning

At the time of our onsite meeting, we discussed your decrease in shipping and I expressed to you that for mail delivery the box would need to be placed at the end of your road where other boxes currently exist. At that point, any time there are more packages than will fit into the mailbox OR you have a package pickup request, we would gladly then drive up to deliver the excess packages and/or retrieve the outgoing parcels for that day. The establishment of the mailbox in the correct location will be the key to clearing up any delivery/pickup issues. Once the mailbox is placed, we will begin servicing your address.

Prior to sending this email, I did consult with my boss and it is in agreement that I have made the correct decision.

Sincerely,

(Redacted)

Postmaster

Sparta Post Office

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Well, you can only imagine how smoking hot I was at this point…and it really all stems from frustration against the bureaucracy.

No being a political person, my reply was, in hindsight, not the smartest nor most politically savvy move….. It was therapy, and therapeutic for me, but I hate to say it, I am businessman, and just not accustomed to dealing in the realm of political situations. In business a lot of the decisions that are made are weighed against risk and cost benefit. The decision are driven the most by profit, with the least exposure to the benefit of your company and customers….. If one of my employees did this to a customer that would be low maintenance, low risk and making my company money, they’d probably be in the unemployment line. The ask is not much, the return is much higher… Regardless….not smart me….responded in a way that was, for the Post Masters authority, just not wise in the long run. Ohhhh to be a political animal….

My reply was on 1/6/2023

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Fair enough (Redacted),

That is not even close to the conversation I remember us having, as I am quite sure you are well aware, I have objected to that request since I paid to have a mailbox installed where it sits. If you indeed did check with your supervisor,  why did he not respond directly to me with the reasoning? As it is now, I have no idea if in fact this was escalated, nor does he have any skin in the game by not participating in the discussion.

So I will make it clear to you, as I think it is in both our interests, I am asking this to be escalated to him directly and I want a communication directly from your supervisor.

After a year or so of dealing with you, I do not believe you have shown, to me as a customer and based upon my recollections of our conversations, the ability to be truthful, nor do I believe you have the ability, or possibly leadership, to follow through on what you actually said you would do. It seems to me (Redacted), you have made this a personal hill to die on, when for me, it is really about good business and safely and securely conducting business from my location.

I want to make sure you, and your supervisor, understand that I will move forward with reaching out to every member of the executive leadership team for USPS, every member of congress and every members of the US Senate. (1/18/2023 – as a note, I will be moving in this direction, I just didn’t know at the time there was an advocacy group I could go through) I will do so because this is not a change consistent with what USPS is supposed to be doing to become profitable. I want to make it clear to you, that I have had the privilege of meeting with members of congress in the past as a guest of Google, now known as Alphabet Inc. This is not my first rodeo, and I want you to know, this conversation is just the beginning, and I expect it will gain traction where it needs to gain traction so that the right outcome will inevitably take place. USPS needs to follow the future of profits and part of that profit center is found in home based small business. If you fail with that, you will die as an organization in the 21^st century.

I feel I have been patient with you, and that I have made a very good faith effort to make this very easy problem go away for both of us. At this point in time, I do not believe you have taken me, or my business interests, seriously.

I want you know that I will include the entirety of this communication chain in my communications with, in the end, your ultimate supervisors. They will see your supervisor, at this point in time, never directly communicated with me as I expected would happen when I asked this matter to be escalated. Finally, I will provide them with documentation to show my value to USPS as a small business over the last decade of operation and why I should be serviced in a manner deserving of a business that has made USPS money in the past and will do so again in this VERY small market.

Finally, I will be requesting a new route carrier for my area because, frankly, I believe the present circumstance have tainted any possible positive relationship I may have been able to form with the present route carrier. Given the nature of the types of merchandise I ship, to allow the present route carrier to pick up and deliver packages from my location creates an unnecessary increased risk of loss to both my business and USPS given these packages are typically insured. I say this because, as I have said, I believe it is the present route carrier that has fought being required to take on my stop as an addition to this route from the outset. I believe his objections and a failure of leadership, may be the reason we find ourselves in this position. Granted (Redacted), I am not in the back room of your offices, so that is something only you, and some of your staff, would know.

It is unfortunate (Redacted) that neither you, nor your supervisor, have made any effort to even evaluate the cost benefit of doing business with my company in our small little county where revenue must be so critically important for USPS’s operations. We are talking about driving somewhere in the neighborhood of what….1000 feet extra a day? You’ve not asked for financials, or any other documents that could have helped you actually make a good business decision. You could have spoken with your staff and had them maintain a count, though I will venture both current and past staff at the Glade Valley post office could tell you, I make USPS money.

Instead, you’ve simply said, no, that is not how we do business, and now, you’ve changed your tune to say, I will do X but only if you do Y. If you said that during your visit, I would have told you that is not going to happen and frankly (Redacted), having a mailbox down at the end of (Redacted) has nothing to do with delivering or picking up packages to and from my office building. Packages that have no business being on a gravel road, unattended, invisible to anyone unless someone is walking or driving by. I think anyone that reads that will see it for exactly what it is, a very weak excuse to justify why your route driver won’t come up (Redacted) to service my address.

Businesses partner together all the time, for mutual benefit. Both UPS and FedEx would love to have my business, both companies understand business must be mutually beneficial for it to be successful, especially in such a small market as Alleghany County. Every dollar helps defray the cost of doing business. Both companies drive up (Redacted) and pick and deliver packages because, it makes good business sense for them.

Do you know if it makes good business sense for USPS? You know it does, but here we are….it seems your solution says, you don’t care how much sense in makes for USPS to do business with me, you either do what I say you’ll do, or “screw you and your profitable packages”.

The unfortunate fact is, decisions like this one are why USPS continues to lose money. Decisions like this, from the perspective of a business owner, should call into question whether or not the right people are in the right positions at the USPS in Alleghany and apparently Greensboro. Just last year USPS received a historic 100 plus billion dollar bailout at tax payer expense. In return, USPS was supposed to change how they do business so that bailouts like that would not be required in the future. As an actual tax payer every year, I do not appreciate how you are managing the resources for which I have contributed!

So I will ask you directly (Redacted) and the mysterious (Redacted) Supervisor, do you consider it a positive outcome for USPS should I shift package business to UPS or FedEx who service my account as I need it serviced? Do you consider this a positive outcome for a business customer when you are unwilling to service a customer’s reasonable request for service in exchange for historically 1000 or so packages a year? Do you consider this to be “Changing how you do business” as an organization to make USPS profitable into the future? I believe anyone who evaluates the situation will come to the same conclusion as I have. Right now it appears that the USPS, at least in Alleghany County, is all about business as usual. As a tax payer that participated in your bail out, that is simply not acceptable.

So at the end of the day, the question then becomes, is that how you want to be seen? Ask yourself, what is in the best interest of USPS as an organization working to become profitable? How would you feel if a member of USPS’s executive leadership team reviewed the entirety of this situation? Would you be proud of the decision that you made? Would you be willing to stake your future career path on this decision and its outcome?

I’ll give you, and your manager, the weekend to think about it. I really do hope that you can take the emotion out of the process, that you can set aside the bureaucracy that is killing USPS, so you can find some clarity to make the decision that should have been made a year ago, the right decision in this matter. If at the end of the business day Monday, you decide your way is the right way, I will begin the process of moving all of my profitable business over to UPS and FedEx, and I’ll leave you, and your organization, with only the least profitable of business, media mail.

I look forward to your supervisors final determination in this matter.

Have a nice weekend,

George Chaney

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As I expected, that was the end of communication on this case. Probably for the best.