It seems twice in the last few weeks, packages left on the porch of our five unit apartment building have been stolen from our stoop. I’m a little fuzzy on when the delivery services should leave stuff at the door or leave a notice and bring it back to the distribution center, but my beef is that someone is brazen enough to steal mail. Isn’t that a federal offence?
And short of installing a camera or chaining an evil looking dog to the porch, what can we do about it? Ah, Oakland.
That’s easy, get some hair, a child’s toy, and some animal blood. Smear the blood on the toy, put it in a cooler with some ice and the hair, then take some polaroids of a niece having fun in the park and then acting scared. Stick all those on top of the cooler and with a crazy ransom note. Wrap up your package and have your friend mail it to you.
When the police knock on your friend’s door, they will be able to tell him who is stealing your mail.
You could just buy a gps tracker, the kind that you can monitor from the internet, turn it on, and send it to yourself from your mom’s house. You could even hide it in something nice, so that they don’t even know that they have it. But where, I ask you, is the fun in that?
Stealing mail is a federal offense, yeah.
My suggestion: You’re boned. It is unlikely you’ll get anything back. You should talk to UPS/FedEx and tell them to deliver to a local aggregate center so you can pick them up yourself. Or, use the DHL “we’ll ship it to your post office” option.
If it’s the USPS, it’s a federal offense. Generally, it’s at the discretion of the delivery person whether to leave the package at the door, but if you’re concerned, you should leave a note with specific instructions (although the thief could just take the note too). You can sometimes arrange with the sender to require a signature for delivery (e.g. in a web form “comments” section).
You are in Oakland, I thought a huge crazed dog was mandatory for residents there?
Put up a fake camera by your doorstep and a small sign:
“Stealing mail is a federal offense with a mandatory two year sentence in a federal prison. Don’t forget the $250,000 dollar fine per piece of mail. See that camera? There’s two more just like it that you don’t see. Have a great day.”
Flowers idea is pretty cool too.
I recommend purchasing a huge crazed dog through mail-order.
With a huge dog, we wouldn’t get much mail, would we?
Exellent ideas, btw. When I can figure out how to box one hundred angry bees, I think I’m set.
Steal your neighbors’ packages. It’s kind of like White Elephant.
It’s Oakland. They’ll just steal the camera.
Get packages delivered to work, instead of home. That was my solution.
Mr. Jojo, please come to reception to sign for your RealDoll.
That’s why the return address and credit card transaction line reads “Medical Body Part Supply, LLC.”
If it is USPS that’s being stolen, call the post office and let them know, as they do have a division that investigates that sort of thing, and will tell your mail carrier to leave you one of those postcards with a “being held at the PO” message, if it’s unsafe to leave packages.
That’s Ms Jojo thankyouverymuch! All that good girly stuff comes in plain brown packaging anyway, so our office boy can’t tell what he is delivering to my desk. Teehee. Who am I kidding, all I get is amazon.com packages.
This is what I was thinking too.
This is what I was thinking too.
My purchases already get sent to work, but my girlfriend’s mom sends a care package every three weeks covered in butterflies and gumdrops. I think I’d rather the hoodlums get them then to put up with snark from our ex-army receptionist.
Note to self, never piss off Flowers.
Shit in a non transparent tupperware, parcel it up in one of the larger Amazon jiffy bags and mail it to yourself. Keep re-mailing it to yourself until stolen.
They won’t ever be caught, so this is a good way to send a message if you dont have a cooler, animals blood, a childs toy and some hair.