Inability to make the right changes. That's it really I think. They initiate change and they just can't get it right. They automated their retail into a machine, but frankly the old school stamp machines gave me more choices and were a lot faster to use. Inevitably now I have to wait in line for several people that are flummoxed by the new ATM styled machine in order to buy more stamps than I will use in a year.
But my latest interaction I will dub cyclical bureaucracy.
My company moved on March 26. About 10 days before the move I went to the post office to pick up a change of address form. These are ubiquitous at post offices - they have them laying around like candy. Only they don't anymore. In an effort to streamline the process the USPS really, really wants you to do the change of address online. And to make sure you comply they no longer leave the cards out for the public to pick up. I know this because I went to 4 post offices looking for them.
Did I mention that they charge you $1 to make the change online?
So I go online to submit the change request, but every time I do and the system asks me to check the address before I hit submit, the address is wrong. It keeps leaving off the suite number. See, in the new office we are in a complex, so I have to show the building number and the suite number. And the online form doesn't allow for enough characters for the 2nd address line to read Bldg 1, Ste 150.
Back to the post office I go. Where I have to stand in a line for 35 minutes in order to ask for a change of address card, explain to the USPS guy that yes I realize I'm supposed to do it online but I can't, and then grudgingly be given the card. I dutifully complete said card and pop it in the mailbox. Done and done.
Or not.
Because yesterday - some 3 weeks after this - I receive my confirmation of change of address from the USPS. And on the outside of the envelope my carrier has handwritten "which box?" I'm confused, but then I realize that the official address on the confirmation letter has NO suite number. Sigh.
I call the number on the confirmation letter, go through multiple layers of automation to get to a human who tells me that now I have to submit a change of address form for the incorrect address that I've just changed, and that I can do it online for only $1. And she hangs up.
Instead I go to the USPS, wait in line, speak to a carrier who bounces me to a clerk who passes me to a supervisor. All of them in turn laugh uproariously when they hear that I tried calling the toll free number. The supervisor pulls up my submission, which includes a scan of the card I turned in, and it very clearly shows that I wrote the suite number and the USPS left it off.
And then I have to fill out a correction to the change of address card form. Of course, I could have saved myself the trip and done it online for only $1! I wonder about all the people who don't have online access or a method of getting to the post office. Way to use automation poorly and without planning USPS!
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