One thing that persistently bothers me is USPS mail that arrives with no date of mailing. Or mail stamped by one of those Pitney Bowes machines that are in many offices that do not show the real date of mailing, and instead show just the time the mail was stamped at the office, and not the time it was accepted by the post office.
What I’d like to see is… every mailing gets stamped with the time it was accepted by the post office.
I have received letters where the actual letter shows a date several weeks earlier than the date I received the letter, with no date of mailing on the envelope. This is certainly a problem for people given deadlines for replying to a letter, or for people receiving credit card bills just a few days before payment is due.
Several times someone I know has shown me letters from New Jersey state agencies dated two weeks earlier, but that arrived in her mailbox only one or two days before the deadline for replying, with threats of termination of services for late replies. Possibly a deliberate move by Chris Christie’s administration to throw people off the Affordable Care Act rolls. Or just good old inefficiency.
I do not know whether it is within the President’s power to order such a change in USPS procedure, to show the date a letter was accepted by the post office. But if it is, I think a lot of people would be thankful. And if it is not, it would be a great P.R. gesture for the U.S. Postal Service if it were to unilaterally adopt these suggestions. Or for Congress to mandate this.
(Even better, of course, would be a bar code on the letter enabling sender and recipient to establish the date it was delivered, and whether it was delivered. This is already available with certified mail, so it is not technically impossible. But I guess it would add to the cost of mailing.)