We have a sticker inside the lid of our mailbox.  It says "managed service point" and it has a bar code.  It has the 5 digit zip and 4 more digits - 1 letter & 3 numbers.  It's our zip, but not our zip+4.

What's going on?

TIA

ETA: Our mailbox is a walk-up and is attached to the wall on our covered porch. 

It is a barcode that the carrier has to scan everyday, so the higher ups know when the carrier is at a certain point in the route. It is a way of controling the carriers, making sure they are where they say they are when they say they are.

They good thing about it being in YOUR mailbox....The carrier HAS to come to your box every day, weather you have mail to be delivered or not. Otherwise the carrier might not come to your door, which sucks if you have outgoing mail.

Thank you.

That's really interesting.  We've had some erratic deliveries lately.  Our old carriers would have our mail to us reliably by early afternoon (almost never after 3 pm).   Since we've had the new carrier, I've called about not getting our weekly grocery ads.  We've also had deliveries at unusually late times, like 6 p.m.

Looks like we won the jackpot.

Hmmm. maybe I should make a call... sometimes we get our mail at extremely late times too... like 5-6 pm, (and sometimes even get extra mail for other streets, too- makes me wonder if any of my mail is on another street...) while on other days we get delivery by 2:30!

I've noticed that one driver is the best- but if she's not the one delivering, it's usually very late!   Makes it hard to watch on rainy days for any book deliveries!   Yes, NewRuth... lucky you, I guess you got the winning sticker!  :)

I imagine it takes a while for a mail carrier to get really good at a route-so on days when your mail is really late it's probably a substitute and so it takes them longer. I talked to a clerk about getting a job as a sub mail carrier.  She said that it takes weeks usually to really learn a route and the subs always end up workign more hours than they actually get paid for because they pay by how long the regular mail carrier takes.  Something like that.  I had no idea that they did those scanner things.

sometimes my mails comes at 2 and sometimes it comes at 430 or anytime in between.

For awhile our mail was arriving late afternoon and sometimes after 6pm, and kept getting later and later in the day.  Finally, it was always after 4:30 and after 6 about half the time.  We finally got a new mail carrier (yay!), and for months now our mail has been delivered between 2:30 & 3:30 (bliss).

Talk to your local postmaster, and make official complaints to the regional postmaster...takes alot of documentation to fire an inefficient employee.

I would bet a lot of the late mail days are due to pivoting, which means they split the route up and several different carriers deliver pieces of it.  The pieces might get delivered after the carrier does their own route.  Or, having to deliver 45 minutes to an hour of another route might make the regular carrier late on their own route.

True Diane.  In my case tho, it was an employee/health issue.  Which I would have had more patience with except he also sucked...some days I would receive orange pick-up slips (delivery attempted), but knew I had been home all day with the dog indoors.  It's one thing if I'm not available for delivery, it's another to lie and say delivery was attempted (more than once). 

The UPS dude just bails out of his truck, leaves package on my porch, rings bell, and talks to my barking dog on his way out (she's one of those noisy 'announcer' types).  I've asked several people if the dog gives them any problem (other than noise) and the answer has always been no.

For whatever reason, we got our mail in record time today - before lunch!

I hope this continues.

I think I love my sticker.