Postal Employees

In my office last week, several carriers were stopped on the way out the door, and each had a brief meeting with a supervisor.
The subject was "forged signatures".

Each carrier was shown a complaint, presumably by a customer, the subject being that something was "delivered" (not stolen) with an unauthorized or unrecognized signature. Locations were GPS'd, signatures off the scanner printed on a paper.

The implication was that carriers, in the interest of expediency, signed the scanner themselves. As far as I know, none signed the form "admitting" to this.

So, the question is, how do these things usually resolve themselves? This is the first time I've seen something like this. Granted, I've only worked as a carrier since 2011. Does this mean the practice is so rampant that management finally decided to crack down? Or that some poor schnook signed a supervisor's (or higher-up) name to a cert or registered?

And what eventually happens to the carriers? Run-of-the-mill LOW? Termination? Something in between? I'm totally ignorant on this one, so I'm curious how other offices have dealt with it.

Yes the practice is rampant just like they were late in responding to falsified scans now they are trying to play catch up since the customer can pull a signature online instead of waiting for the service to go through all the 3849s and oops just not not finding the correct quarter slip of paper. So now management has just fired a warning shot across your collective bows. The next time a complaint comes in expect the next step in progressive discipline.

You have answered your own question.

I asked multiple questions above. Your response doesn't make sense, especially for my "authorized agent" question.

I believe this is common practice, one of the many idiotic things carriers do. It saves both carrier time and clerk time, and 95% of the time is appreciated by the customer. It's the sort of thing management loves for you to do, until they don't.

His answer made perfect sense for the authorized agent. You had better have it in writing that the recipient appoints you as his authorized agent, even better have it notarized.

How about if the customer signs the 3849 Form and authorizes the carrier to scan it and leave the package /certified mail in the mailbox? I have had one customer sign the 3849 and tell me that I can use it anytime in the future if there is a need. Is that allowed? Technically it's the customers signature. I've asked a few people in the office and they aren't sure.

Shouldn’t be able to scan that 3849 more than once anyway, right?

This is right before I went on leave, but some carriers at my station reported no longer being able to scan the signed 3849 without also signing the scanner. Maybe confirms the idea that the signed 3849 only authorizes the attempt to redeliver the item, not leaving it without the customer present. Not helpful if your scanner dies, though.

I can see someone at a business receiving this stuff just scribbling a name but a residential piece will more than likely have someone policing the signature confirmation. I remember a supervisor making a big stink about making customers print their names and sign them legibly, only to run into a trouble when running into a few customers that couldn't read or write and just scribbled what they could. At the end of the day, you don't know what that individuals capacity to write is and the signature they put down is what they put down.

I agree.

We had a CCA get sent out with over 30 certifieds one day, all going to the same development regarding an upcoming construction project. He signed for each one himself and left them in the CBU mailboxes. Supervisor was very surprised when he returned to the office so quickly LOL