To the extent it's still relevant in the modern world, our postal system really needs to work a little more like the phone system.
I can be pretty much anywhere in the US (or really, the world, if I want to pay international roaming fees), someone can dial my well-known phone number, and my phone will ring.
For ordinary first class mail, I should be able to generate unique ID numbers on the USPS's website, and associate them with any physical US address I wish at any time. Then I can keep one or more postal IDs pointed at the location(s) I actually receive mail at, and the scanners (virtually all mail is routed by optical scanners now, even hand-addressed envelopes) can just read the ID number and stamp on the current physical address.
according to the story, the post office did better than any phone provider would. he moved to a new location, maybe years later, and a piece of mail still followed him to his new address. i'm sure the registry gets notified of forwarding address changes for people on their lists, so they could in theory keep up with you even if you moved a bunch of times (as long as you forwarded from at least your last address).
if you get a new phone number, your old one probably won't forward to you, and once someone else has that new number, you will never get forwarded calls. at least with a mailing address, new people can occupy that same old address but any mail to it will still forward based on your name.
It appears to not have been the post office that "did better than any phone provider would":
> Did you know that, when the marrow donation center finds a
> match, they try desperately to reach the potential donor? Even
> if that person has moved from their dorm room long ago, even if
> their contact information has changed, even if they’re in a
> different state, even if 16 years have passed? They try. They
> look all over for ways to reach that person.
They succeeded in sending mail to his last known address, which was his old company. He simply failed to set up forwarding from there (although he tried, it apparently didn't work) and didn't pay attention to what get sent there.
The phone equivalent would have tried his dorm and that would have been that. He never would have even known that they had tried to contact him.
Wouldn't the phone equivalent be them calling his office number and leaving a message? It seems like they looked up his name and when they found a hit, they found his office and his office address. Surely there would also have been a similar process looking up his last known phone number if they determined he no longer used whatever number he gave them?
You have to pay for mail forwarding and in case for a address that old it probably didn't really something worthwhile. But we have email addresses now.
I recently changed my address and USPS charged me $1 to file the online mail forwarding form but I believe it's free if you go the post office or mail in the form (requires stamp). They will forward all mail to the new address for 18 months. After that I believe you can get a year extension but that will probably cost you another $1.
you do not have to pay for mail forwarding with the us post office. i've moved twice in the past few years and have had a bunch of mail forwarded without ever paying for anything.
I seriously doubt the post office had much to do with tracking him down. My repeated experience with the USPS is that they pay absolutely no attention to mail forwarding requests, ever. It's far more likely that someone at the matching network did some googling.
And I don't need a new phone number, that's kind of the point. I can switch providers and still keep my number. I can move to the other side of the country and keep my number. That's what I want out of the post office.
I've wanted that for years from the post office: one address, your stuff follows you wherever, you never change your "address" you just update your location with the post office. I explained the idea to my first wife in the late seventies, and she thought I was solving a non-problem.
Some mailbox companies do that for you. People (esp old folks) living in RV traveling don't have physical address, so they set up one permanent address with a mailbox company to receive all incoming mails. The mailbox company would forward them to their current location. Whenever they stop at one place extensively, they contact the mailbox company to update the mail forward to the new location.
AFAICT, mail forwarding is done by the local post office that would have delivered the mail. So mail headed to CA gets to your local CA post office, gets a yellow sticker on it, and gets stuck back in the mail. Mail originating in MA, destined for a CA, and forwarded to MA, does indeed cross the country twice. And routing loops loop, true story.
How do they submit forwarding updates to remote post offices? Well, they've already got an in-house network with QoS guarantees, so of course they use that. Yes, I'm referring to letter delivery itself - a good lesson in technology sticking around because it "works".
They do have a new service called "premium forwarding" or something where they want to gouge you something like $20/mo for making their life easier too (and to encourage you to use it, they take away the ability to update your normal forwarding online!). It's bureaucracy, perverse incentives abound! I've also heard (from a letter carrier) that the USPS is looking to stop Saturday delivery, so they've been holding back mail on Saturdays to justify it being a light day.
I thought mail forwarding was done at the initial address scan, not the final address scan. I did a bunch of research on this a few months ago, but unfortunately I can't find a source right now.
That would make the most sense, but I've observed contradictory behavior with MA->CA->MA mail taking ~10 days. Also, the CA post office not respecting the "end forward" date, and mail getting sent back and forth a few times. I suppose I could have been seeing corner cases due to some unknown facet, but to me they indicate an antiquated system.
some other smaller companies do receiving and forwarding, some will even scan the mail you receive so you can view it online and see whether it's junk mail or not - http://www.virtualpostmail.com/
There are mail forwarding services out there already, but they cost money and exist at the whim of private enterprises that could disappear at any time.
I had a high-school teacher that told us you could write a SSN on an envelope and the postal service was required by law to get it to the person. He claimed to have tried it out by sending himself a letter, but it took many months to arrive.
You'll notice from my hedging that I only half believe the story. Also, it may be a true story, but may have happened in the '50's or something.
That wouldn't have helped me when I was in college; my college stopped supporting my email address after I left. (They also had this weird email client called Simian that you had to use, and it wouldn't let you read your email until it had authenticated.)
To the extent it's still relevant in the modern world, our postal system really needs to work a little more like the phone system.
I can be pretty much anywhere in the US (or really, the world, if I want to pay international roaming fees), someone can dial my well-known phone number, and my phone will ring.
For ordinary first class mail, I should be able to generate unique ID numbers on the USPS's website, and associate them with any physical US address I wish at any time. Then I can keep one or more postal IDs pointed at the location(s) I actually receive mail at, and the scanners (virtually all mail is routed by optical scanners now, even hand-addressed envelopes) can just read the ID number and stamp on the current physical address.