Minnesota Mail: As Fast As The Pony Express

[BobKamman]

If you are thinking of mailing something to Minnesota –

Allow extra time.

It’s true, you can find it on the Internet, I did a Google search.

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/whats-behind-the-intermittent-mail-deliveries-in-the-twin-cit... 

I am trying to help a client cash some savings bonds she inherited (POD). Slight problem, her first name is misspelled. Two different ways. She could try to take them to the bank, but the instructions online for what happens there make it sound like applying for a Presidential pardon.  Even if the clerks know what they are doing.  

So we decided to deal directly with Treasury, by mailing them, with lots of documentation, to the Post Office box in Minneapolis where such items are sent. I used First Class (now called Ground Advantage), with a tracking number. The large envelope was picked up in Phoenix by the Post Office on Tuesday, October 31. It made it to Minneapolis by Sunday, November 5. And then it got stuck.

When it had not moved by November 7, I asked for help online through the USPS website. They acknowledged my request. Then I heard nothing, until they emailed me this morning that it had just been delivered at 6:48am.

Am I practicing banking without a license? Next time I’ll use Priority Mail. And there will be a next time, because we didn’t send all of the bonds at once. I wonder, though, if mail to Treasury in the Twin Cities is like mail to the Tax Court in our nation’s capital. It goes first to a facility where they poke it and prod it and zap it to make sure it’s not a nuclear bomb. Maybe that’s what happens in some remote location in the Northwoods.

[IRonMaN]

That is an easy one to explain.  They say your name on it and immediately instituted safeguards out of fear of what could be inside.