6/7/2005

A Public Service Announcement

Uncle AndrewUncle Andrew
Filed under: @ 10:59 am

Walked out to pick up our mail this morning to discover that the entire block’s boxes had been emptied, in broad daylight.

According to our local Police Department, most of the checks that are stolen from mailboxes in the Puget Sound area are washed, forged and cashed—or at least attempted—within a couple of hours of their theft. Thank Crom all we lost were a couple of NetFlix DVDs.

I was going to spend the afternoon recuperating from a terrible cold. Instead I’m off to my friendly neighborhood hardware store to purchase a locking mailbox.

Consider this your wakeup call, people: buy yourselves a locking mailbox, and take all your outgoing mail to the post office or other highly secure and public mail receptacle. Don’t be as stupid as we were. No one should ever be as stupid as we were. Not even us.

4 Responses to “A Public Service Announcement”

  1. gavin Says:

    Gee, all we get is kids playing mailbox baseball. I feel left out…

  2. Uncle Andrew Says:

    The meth-heads just haven’t found your neighborhood yet, my friend. It won’t last forever.

    Yet another Dead Kennedys song comes to mind:

    “We ain’t going to the party,
    We ain’t going to the game,
    Ain’t going to the disco,
    Ain’t gonna cruise down Main,

    “Stealing people’s mail,
    Stealing people’s mail,
    Stealing people’s mail,
    Stealing people’s mail,
    Stealing people’s mail on a Friday Night.”

  3. Val Says:

    Yikes!

    I worry about that all the time out in our neck of the woods. Our mail doesn’t get delivered
    by uniformed USPS workers in a jaunty red, white and blue truck. Instead, we have contractors
    who drive personal vehicles customized with right hand drive and a tiny “US Post” bumper sticker
    clinging to the back as “official” identification. Now, because it is a small, rural community,
    we all know Mr. Opland’s mail truck. But, occasionally Mr. Opland has a day off, or is sick,
    or on vacation, or there’s a special delivery so it isn’t always Mr. Opland’s familiar burgandy jeep
    stopping at all the mailboxes. We wouldn’t give it a second thought. Because of this, we pay
    our bills online and take everything else to the post office to send off.

    Bummer about the Netflix DVDs. Is the company decent and understanding about missing DVDs, or
    are you screwed? I ask because I also subscribe to Netflix and with all I described above, I
    worry a little.

  4. Uncle Andrew Says:

    Actually, NetFlix is pretty cool.. If you have a couple of missing DVDs, they write it off. If you lose more than a few, they put your account on hold until they decide what to do with you.

    After I discovered the theft, I put a letter in every mailbox on our street letting everyone know what had happened. Yesterday, one of my neighbors called me to let me know she was putting together a group of homeowners that are willing to pay about a hundred bucks per household to get a bank of USPS-installed locking mailboxes for our block. Pretty sweet, because it means that both incoming and outgoing mail have locking receptacles, and the mailman uses his master key to open them. Wish I’d thought of that.


All portions of this site are © Andrew Lenzer, all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.