2001-07-09 - 12:15 p.m.
Advice to those preparing to move - regardless of how much time the United States Postal Service claims that it requires to process your change of address form, don't send it in until the day you move. It'll save you one big headache.
As I was going through the first run of phone calls last month, I also filled out and sent in my change of address to the post office. Their website says they'd like it 4 weeks in advance. So I obliged. Silly me. It didn't occur to me at the time that the move date might change or that I'd have to wander unguided through seven levels of Hell to change the previously submitted form.
It began with a phone call to my local post office. I was told I had to speak to my postal carrier, who was (of course) not in. So I called back later to be told by my postal carrier that he had nothing to do with the process and I ought to fill out another change of address to temporarily send my mail back to my current residence. Seems like a lot of effort and confusion on their part, so I think that perhaps asking the post office in V.B. to hold it there might be a simpler alternative. Ha.
First I have to find out which post office serves my new residence. USPS.com has a location finder, but only spits out offices near your address - not which one serves it. 1-800-ASK-USPS has an automated service to find your office, but not for the zip code where I'll be living. So I call the main V.B. branch and ask them. The postal worker on the phone kindly looks up my new address and informs me that my new zip code would be.... But that's not what I want to know. Which office delivers the mail there? She gives me the phone number to one that wasn't even listed on USPS.com. I call them and ask about having the forwarded mail held until the 30th. Oh, no, the second postal worker tells me. You don't want to do that. It will just loop back to your old house.
I'm not quite sure why it would do that, but she seemed confident that it would.
Now convinced that privatization of postal services can only be a good thing, I call the 1-800 number again and pray I get someone who seems to grasp the situation. It isn't easy getting a person on the line. You have to punch the correct numbers in proper arcane order to be passed to a "customer service representative." After three failed attempts, I'm talking to some poor minimum wage postal employee who has to listen to all of the above while my son, worried that his Momma's head is about to explode, wails in the background.
"All you have to do," she begins in the tone of voice I imagine is frequently heard over crisis hotlines, "is submit another change of address form with the new date and the word CORRECT written on it."
"That will work?" I'm a little incredulous.
"That will work," she assures me.
So Zack and I made a field trip to the post office to carry out her instructions. I wish I had brought a red pen to make the CORRECT more noticeable. I asked the clerk at the desk to highlight it for me when I gave it to her to mail and have my fingers crossed that this is the end of it....
