Postal Service has made it harder to put a vacation hold on your mail, and that’s probably a good thing
Until earlier this fall, it was ridiculously, almost frighteningly easy to go online and tell the U.S. Postal Service to hold your mail while you were out of town.
Enter your address, enter the dates of your vacation and check the box to either pick up the mail at your local post office or have the carrier deliver it. Done.
Every time I went through the process, the possibilities for mischief crossed my mind — how easy it would be to harass/punk someone by suspending their mail delivery, maybe for just a few days now and then, to add confusion to their lives. It’s just the kind of thing my impish college housemates and I would have done.
So you don’t learn the hard way like I did, you should know that the USPS forestalled that opportunity in October by requiring customers to create verified accounts with usernames, passwords and personalized security questions before they can order vacation holds.
In concept, it’s no big deal. One more login to keep track of in exchange for protection against pranksters, OK. And I wouldn’t bother to mention it except to warn you that the account-creation program is buggy. I recently went online to order a mail hold two days before we were leaving on a trip — my usual timetable — and discovered the new requirement to create an account. The template asked for my cell number, evidently to send a verification code, then the program rejected my cell number without explanation. An onscreen message said my verification code would arrive by standard mail within five days.
Since I didn’t have five days to wait, I hopped on the phone and called the USPS help line. Fiftyfive minutes later, a very nice operator came on to tell me, yeah, gee, sorry, there was nothing he could do, there are some bugs in the system (bugs that many commenters on my Facebook page later told me they’d encountered and bugs that were evidently still there Wednesday morning, when for demonstration purposes I attempted to repeat the process using my wife’s cell number and in the end got the message, “This service is temporarily unavailable.”)
What the operator didn’t tell me — what I should have known and information that might prove helpful to you — is that mail customers can go to USPS online and print out Form 8076, an Authorization to Hold Mail document similar to the cards available at post office. Fill it out, sign it and simply leave it for the carrier. No account necessary.
Was there a security breach that prompted this new level of security? A rash of bogus holds from multitudinous imps?
Thinking there might be a tale lying therein, I reached out several times to the USPS communications team. All I ever heard back was, “The U.S. Postal Service takes the privacy of customers’ mail very seriously and takes measures to ensure that all personal information is protected. These updates are being made to increase security for Postal Service customers.”
I’ll allow it. Especially since I now have an account — the validation number did arrive by post as promised — and I receive regular emails with the subject header “Informed Delivery Daily Digest.” This digest contains scanned images of the mail that is about to be delivered to our house as well as updates on packages that are on the way, services that have yet to prove useful or interesting but certainly might someday.
My hard-won advice: If you’re going to be traveling over the holiday season and want the post office to hold your mail for your return, start the sign-up process for your online account now.
Say what you will about Illinois Democrats. At least they had the character and good sense to dump their sleazeball-in-chief.
Did anyone complain back in early 2009 that the Illinois General Assembly’s impeachment and removal of Gov. Rod Blagojevich was tantamount to overturning the results of the election of 2006? Not that I can find in the news archives.
In his last-ditch closing argument to state senators, the embattled governor reminded them eight times that he’d been elected by the people, but he never made the claim that removing him from office would negate or offend the will of the electorate.
Why? Three reasons.
■ Because the will of the people in 2006 to have a liberal Democratic governor was going to be satisfied by the ascension of liberal Democratic lieutenant governor, Pat Quinn. Blagojevich’s former Republican challenger, the late Judy Baar Topinka, would not become governor.
■ Because impeachment and removal are integral to the political process, not apart from it. These steps assume that changes in circumstances since Election Day have important weight. Impeachment and removal from office in the wake of a gross abuse of power doesn’t destroy democracy, it strengthens it.
■ Because even the vain, obtuse Blagojevich knew that vast majorities of remorseful voters were disgusted by the allegations against him and wanted him gone.
On the chance that President Donald Trump is removed by a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate after he’s impeached by the U.S. House, the will of the people in 2016 to have a conservative Republican president will be satisfied by the ascension of conservative Republican Vice President Mike Pence. Trump’s former challenger, Hillary Clinton, won’t become president.
(And when I say “the will of the people in 2016,” here of course I mean the will of a significant minority of the people who were geographically scattered enough to allow Donald Trump win the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million.)
The public was thrilled to see Blagojevich ousted. His job approval ratings had been in the low teens even before his arrest. The only Democrat in either chamber of the General Assembly to vote for him during the impeachment and removal process was Rep. Deb Mell, his sister-in-law.
Heaven knows the Illinois Democratic party had and has its glaring faults. But at least it showed a spine and acted with purpose and ethical resolve in 2009 when faced with gross misbehavior by its top elected official. At least its elected members didn’t indulge and parrot his fanciful, desperate excuses. At least they didn’t try to change the subject and impugn the men and women of law enforcement who produced evidence against him. At least they didn’t cultishly abandon most of the principles they once espoused in an effort to defend a corrupt narcissist with goofy hair who had no loyalty to them.
Re: Tweets
Because of early holiday deadlines I’ll be announcing the winner of this week’s poll in my Dec. 8 column.