I wish to complain about the USPS in our town, Ames; probably in our state: Iowa. My husband and I are retirees who spend half the year traveling or in Canada where we own a small cottage. It's a long time to be away and we usually stop or return to Ames several times during our "away time" to check mail, our house and yard. The postal service will only hold our mail for one month, not renewable. We do claim our mail (or have someone do it) every couple of weeks while we're away, so a simple renewal would work well for us, but still require sorting by our local carrier. Nothing said made any difference to our post master. He would not bend to a hold and pick up system for us.

So, to accommodate our post office, we took a mail box and had our mail rerouted from our home address to the PO Box, which is temporary, but long term. It turns out that instead of sorting out our mail and depositing it to our box, the Ames Post Officce sends our mail to Wichita, Kansas, where it is processed and sent back. This takes seven extra days for our mail to arrive in our box and seems unnecessarily expensive given that post office continually complains about having a low budget and loss of business. Remember, we go to Canada, so forwarding is no their prerogative in this case. We offered to have someone pick up our mail in our absence if mail was simply moved from the sorting table to our box, but that was rebuffed by the post master. The problem we face is that when we do return to handle the mail, we're always seven days behind. If we miss something, a bill or an expected renewal or whatever, we're stuck. We try to pay all our bills online, but sometimes we can't and if we miss a bill, we're stuck with paying a penalty for late payment. It's the process of holding our mail for seven days when it could simply be transferred that's the problem.

Our postmaster insists that we are the only family in Ames with this problem. His response is "we will not do anything special for you and that's that." He also claims that no one else complains (although I know other retirees who face similar problems and have told me they've complained). If the post office is facing financial difficulties, doesn't it make sense to not use this seven day transfer process using the time, electronics and annoyance of customers and money just to make sure no postal service staff member has to walk across a room and put a packet of mail in a PO Box or in a bin to go into a PO Box or to be held? If the post office is losing business, wouldn't it make sense to accommodate customers rather than brush them off. I rarely expect special service, but this is ridiculous. It's costing us and the postal service, it's inconvenient for us and the post office? Who could we contact to get some thought into the process and some improvement in our post office's service policies.