When I came home on Wednesday, there was no mail in our mailbox. That seemed strange, but it happens sometimes. I didn’t think much about it.
Tonight, though, we realized we were missing our latest Netflix movies. We checked the web site, and sure enough — they should have arrived Wednesday. “Uh oh,” I said. “This could be trouble.”
“We mostly get catalogs and personal finance magazines,” Kris said. “We don’t get checks in the mail. Could a thief really have nabbed anything important?”
“It’s tax season,” I said. “We’ve received most of our documents, but not all of them. We don’t have the interest statement for your bank account, for example. That probably has your social security number on it.”
“What can we do?” Kris said. It was 8 p.m. Friday evening.
I googled for information about stolen mail. Ironically, one of the top results was a Get Rich Slowly article from last February: “What To Do If Your Identity is Stolen”. After re-reading that post (and the comments that follow), I plan to:
- Check our credit reports. AnnualCreditReport.com is an official, government-approved site through which consumers can request one yearly report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies. We cold request them all at once or we could stagger them. I’ll stagger my requests. I’ll make my first check tonight, and my second in a couple weeks. (Update: my credit report is currently clean.)
- Open a post-office box. I rejected the idea before now because it seemed like an unnecessary expense. I’m going to do more research into this. I’ll also price security mailboxes.
- Speak with our postal carrier tomorrow. It’s too bad we didn’t realize there was a problem today — she had to bring a package to the door, and we could have talked to her then.
- Report the theft to the police. I’m sure there’s nothing they can do, but it never hurts to alert the authorities.
- Check with the neighbors. If they’re missing Wednesday’s mail, we can be certain there’s a problem.
I’ve been dreading something like this. The rising threat of identity theft is one of the reasons I’ve been moving to a paperless personal finance system. We’re pretty diligent about shredding documents, but I’ve always felt the mailbox was the weak link in our security chain. It’s time we address that, I guess. Odds are nothing critical was taken. However, there’s a possibility that you’ll be seeing a lot of articles about identity theft here in the near future.
“One thing’s for sure,” Kris said. “Whoever stole our mail isn’t going to be impressed with the Netflix movies they got: True Grit and The Razor’s Edge.” HA!
Have you ever had your mail stolen? Can you offer us any advice? What can you tell us about post office boxes?
(See also the U.S. Postal Service’s guide to protecting your mail from thieves.)
Update
Our mail carrier just came to the door. She says that her route has had a terrible problem with mail theft lately, though not on this street. While we were with her, she called her supervisor, who said that we should contact the county sheriff’s non-emergency line and go to the USPS site to file a notice. The supervisor also noted that there was a huge bout of mail theft all over the area last week (not just on our carrier’s route). People are apparently after refund checks to fund their drug habits.
Our carrier told us a story about how one time she’d left mail in a fellow’s box, drove up the street and then back down, and the guy came out wondering where his mail was. In just a few minutes, it had been stolen. The guy eventually found it in some nearby bushes, torn open and left behind.
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Tom – You do not have to pay netflix for missing movies. But they do keep track of it to make sure you don’t report too many missing. I had one that I put in an outside postal box that never made it to the Netflix warehouse (which is one zipcode over from me – about 2 miles from my house). They asked all sorts of question about where I dropped it off and such. It was almost as if they needed my information because they suspected the postal center more than me. In my case it was either lost or stolen at the PO.
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A secured personal mailbox like at a UPS store is a great idea. I’ve had one for about 10 years. Please note I highly recommend a UPS store box over a PO box – you can’t get fedex or UPS deliveries to PO boxes.
The UPS store mail box signs for packages and keeps my mail secure. I can call them up to see if a package has arrived. I can check the mail at any hour and I can even have them forward my mail to another address if I want.
Anyhow, yeah, UPS store box rocks. Other things – you want to talk to a postal
inspector about your mail concerns. They actually care. The police? Not so much.
Call up all three credit agencies and tell them you want to put a fraud alert on your account. It’s free and lasts for 90 days. This will make it harder for someone to get credit without you being contacted. I’d recommend a service like http://www.privacyguard/frank as well to get unlimited access to your credit reports and look at them on at least a quarterly basis. If your identity is stolen, a smart thief isn’t going to use the identity immediately. They’re going to wait awhile till your not expecting it.
I personally put a security freeze on my credit files. This can make getting credit on your account, even legitimately, a complete pain in the ass – but is that such a bad thing?
If you do decide someone actually stole your info, you should contact the FBI as well; they won’t help you, but getting accurate numbers about issues like identity theft allows them to better align their resources.
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We’ve used a Mailboxes, Etc. (now UPS) box for many years, and have been very happy with it. One location went out of business before the switch to UPS, which was annoying, but UPS seems to have more stable franchisees. Most of the problems I’ve ever heard about are people who go to the other mail services that often aren’t as stable.
We’ve had many things stolen out of our mailbox here, so I would never consider having anything truly important or valuable (like Netflix) sent to the street address. Unfortunately, some people insist on using that address no matter how many times I ask that they not do so. My mother kept doing that, and several birthday cards with checks in them were stolen before she switched to using our mailing address.
I’ve considered installing a locking box, but I’ve always wondered how secure they really are unless you have them mounted in brick or the like. If it’s just a box on a pole, what’s to stop someone taking the whole contraption? Probably a silly concern, but with thieves using bulldozers to take our ATMs, it does occur to me.
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The MAIN reason I have had my mail delivered to a PO Box for close to 20 years!
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Be aware that not all PO boxes are available 24/7. I got a PO box in my destination city when I moved, but didn’t realize you could access the boxes only during business hours, which were something like 9-4 during the week and 9-noon on Saturday.
Companies were supposed to have mailed tax documents by the end of January.
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It could be very possible the mail sorters decided to slack off that day or a mail bag with your mail in it was “misplaced” (read: stuffed under a table somewhere in the sorting facility.) Happens all the time, especially in large cities where they can’t handle all the mail in 1 day. I’ve lived in urban apartments most of my life (with locked mailboxes) and had many days where there’s no mail at all. And we get TONS of junk mail daily.
All I can say is make sure your locked box’s latch is strong and keep it in good repair, very easy to jimmy those open if they’re weak.
Put a fraud alert on your credit reports too! Good luck!
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I don’t have any advice that you haven’t already covered. Mail theft worries me sometimes but I’d not heard of it happening to anyone I know. I hope it turns out fine for you. Good luck.
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I’d love if you blog about the outcome of this. I’m curious and a little worried for you – not that I’m going to loose sleep over it, though.
I have always lived in buildings with locked boxes and I have packages delivered to my work where someone else can sign for them. That security is not something I’m willing to let go of. I’m so used to it, I haven’t even thought of what I’ll do when I finally buy a house. I guess I’ll get a PO box – I don’t trust a regular old mail box – not with what’s been happening in all these posts!
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One of the first things I did when I moved into my current house was to have a locking mailbox installed. Mail goes in, but it doesn’t come out unless you have a key. I doubt a thief is going to take the time to wrest the entire box and pole out of the ground—-just to get my JCrew catalog—-when there’s a nice, unlocked box just down the way.
Last summer, my car was broken into—when the car alarm went off at 4 a.m. (I didn’t even know it worked!) I ran into the street in my PJ’s (I’m not so smart at 4 a.m.) and saw a car cruising down the street, stopping at each mailbox. Now, maybe this WASN’T the person who was trying to get into my car, maybe it was a newspaper delivery guy. Or maybe it was the same person who’s stealing YOUR mail, J.D.! (-:
Anyway, I created a flyer about the car break in and about the possible mail theft, and blanketed my neighborhood with it. I’ll bet your neighbors would be happy to know that this is happening too, J.D., so they can keep a better eye on their boxes. . . .
I recommend a locking mailbox. You could also consider electronic delivery of bank statements, etc, but then there’s the issue of online identity theft!
Best of luck!
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[...] Rich Slowly personal finance that makes cents « What To Do About Stolen Mail? | [...]
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Getting mail stolen is the pits. I’ve always insisted on a locking box, despite my wife’s allegation I am just paranoid.
I have only had my identification stolen one time. Some guy got hold of my name, address and Discover card number. So what did he buy with it? An ad in an Arkansas paper using my name as the purchaser but giving his real name and phone number in the ad. No one accused him of being bright.
My wife had her purse stolen once on the light rail. Whoever stole it kept the purse but then dumped all of her ID and credit cards on the sidewalk. Apparently just looking for cash. Someone found my cell phone number in the pile of stuff and called us so she got lucky that time and no one used her identity.
Hope it all works well for you. Make sure you sign for a credit report monitoring service for the next year or so.
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Your post office will charge you $ 5.67 per month ($68 per year) for a box. (I know, because we live in the same city.) If mail theft is a problem, it is well worth the nominal expense.
I don’t have this problem because I have a mail slot that comes into my home–gotta love those 1929 houses!
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Hope it’s just a false alarm, but other than the ideas mentioned, consider this option, too. (Not sure if it’s available in your state.)
https://www.trustedid.com/html/identity_theft_protection_resource_001.php
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I have a PO box even though I’m pretty cheap. My bank refused to send mail to a PO Box. I think I should press this issue and change banks if they can’t send documents to that box.
Carol
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Earlier this week, I got a letter from the management of my apartment complex informing tenants that rent checks had been stolen from the office’s mailbox. Although the apartment buildings themselves are locked, the mailbox was located in the entryway of one of the buildings, which is accessible to anyone. So the management has now decided to move the mailbox INSIDE the building, which only tenants can enter — duh!
Fortunately, my rent check wasn’t one of the ones that was stolen. I have never liked online banking so much as when I was able to log in and see an image of my check and know it had been cashed by the apartment complex.
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Someone on the bank’s staff may know when the interest statement was sent out.
I’m still waiting for a 1099 so I have my credit union’s interest income statement. It DOES have my social security number on it, but it does not have the account number. Mine was mailed January 30, which is the alleged deadline, isn’t it? Seems like you should have received it by now.
Mail theft is a big problem in my neighborhood. One day I got a call from a lady who lived in the War Zone to the north of me; she said someone had stuck my power bill into her mailbox, open and sans the check I’d mailed.
A lot of people around here have locking mailboxes, and some of them have had brick or block pillars built to hold mailboxes, to discourage people from hammering them with baseball bats.
Those group mailboxes, according to our mail carriers, are the worst: all the newer developments around here have them, and they get robbed all the time.
I’ve not bothered to buy a locking box, because it’s a hassle. Instead, I pay my bills electronically, have my paychecks deposited automatically, and minimize delivery of clients’ money to my home address. When I have to send a check, I physically carry it to the post office.
Reading all the headaches commenters here describe, I think I’ll look in to getting a P.O. box, too! UPS sounds great but it’s too far away. I think at our post office you can walk in to the lobby even outside of business hours to get your mail.
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for those of you who havent done their taxes for 07, i recommend setting up the direct deposit feature like the one turbotax offers online for free. Its safer thank mail. Sorry about that J.D.
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You can get a simple locking/secure mail box for $150-200. It has a small slot up top for the mail, then a larger locked door underneath for your access. Down side is it doesn’t accept boxes or very thick packages so those will need to be delivered to your door. I’ve never had an issue with mine. If some one is totally determined they could take a sledgehammer to it or pry it open I’m sure, but most of the folks that steal mail want in and out in a matter of seconds.
Also, as you already have mail stolen, I would assume the worst. Call all your banks, all your credit cards, etc. and take a position of your identity having already been stolen and take every and all steps to secure your bank accounts, your ssn, and all other personal info (utility accounts #s for example).
Good luck!
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One reason we use the UPS Store for our mailbox is that the address doesn’t look like a PO Box, but can appear as an apartment or street number. Places that will not deliver to a PO Box don’t balk at our address, 99% of the time. The fact that they’ll accept packages for us from anyone (not just UPS) is a nice bonus.
I initially used such a mailbox due to privacy and security concerns. I’ve found that reputable private companies are far less likely to tell someone who rents a particular box without a subpoena than the USPS is – they’ve been known to give that information out to just about anyone who asks. I think they consider it a matter of public record. With a private firm, it’s a contractual matter, and it stays private.
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That is pretty scary to think about. I think it’s one of the main reasons I do everything electronically. Even my refund checks are submitted electronically. You still have to worry about hackers, but they are probably less than desperate druggies.
I’ll definitely be looking into a locking mailbox.
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Maybe its my own naivety, but what does a thief do with a stolen check? Whenever I need to cash a check, the bank teller always checks my ID. I’m not doubting they would steal them, I’m just curious as to the mechanism.
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I put a credit application addressed to a different address into my mailbox. When it’s no there, we knew it was stolen. No one believed us until that piece of mail was missing. We did ask the mailman, and he didn’t take it, so someone had a key to our box. I was complaining that our apt building should be responsible, but they weren’t going to spend money on anything that wouldn’t bring in new leases. I don’t live there anymore.
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Our neighborhood has had mail theft problems as well. Most of the homes are older with a slot where mail drops inside your home. For the folks with exterior boxes, many have opted for a locking box. You just have to make sure your postal worker has a key also. It’s a good idea to give an additional key to a neighbor for when you are out of town. The link listed above by Deborah: http://www.themailboxsuperstore.com/post-mount-mailboxes/aluminum/pinnaclelockingmailboxheavyduty.cfm?source=affiliates&bid=155641&aid=CD3286&opt= shows one version. That same site (under a search on “locking”) shows several more in various styles and pricing. It’s worth it to get it. But rest assured that the theives were likely looking for quick cash, not identity theft.
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You need to keep checking your credit report. Even if someone were to commit fraud against you today–and they could very well wait a while–it might not show up in your credit report for a few months. Don’t trust that because your report shows nothing fraudulent now that you’re home free.
Contact anyone you think may have sent anything important recently to find out if they actually did. That’ll help you narrow down what might have gone missing.
Good luck!
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I haven’t had mail stolen, but:
We sold our house two years ago and moved to a retirement community. I still work – self employed – and of course notified all my customers of my new address, but some don’t pay atrention so even after forwarding expired, soe checks still got sent to my old address.
Do you think the jerk that bought our house could have tossed them back to the postman so that they could have been returned to sender? Nope – the *$%@ even has my email address, so he could have TOLD me he had checks and I would have driven to pick them up. But nooooo, the lazy %$#@! apparently just throws them away..
Some people.. if *I* get a check that does not belong to me I make every effort to get it where it DOES belong or at least returned to the sender – that’s just ordinary human courtesy. But not this $%%@!..
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@JD
Credit freeze..yeah that’s the term I was looking for! I better take more ginko.
On this subject, I just noticed my complex posted a sign at our mailbox island warning people not to leave mail in their boxes overnight to avoid theft. I guess they don’t feel too secure about those locking mailboxes.
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I feel your pain, I live on a street that is fairly busy and I tend to not be around when the mail is dropped of so plenty of time exists for someone to come and take it.
It is a shame you cannot trust people these days.
Derrick
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icup:
Crooks have a way of washing the ink off checks and writing them anew. So they could erase and rewrite the payee and amount on a check and keep the signature.
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I haven’t had paper mail stolen because our mailboxes lock at this apartment building. However, I’ve had three packages stolen. I don’t know what my mail carrier is smoking, because he knows about this neighborhood and he leaves them out there anyway. Or he did–I finally wrote a note on the box to remind him not to leave anything out there. Unfortunately, not before my daughter’s birthday present from me was left outside and stolen. It was just a toy broom, so it serves the idiots right, but I still felt horrible.
I have no idea what to do about that, either, other than complain. Unless a USPS package has delivery confirmation on it, I can’t prove it was sent to me anyway. So I guess I would recommend that if anyone here wants to send a package to a loved one via the postal service, you’d do well to go ahead and splurge the less than a dollar it costs to have something the post office can track.
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[...] debit report, they do not print the whole SSN on the report. I mention this because I just read this article at Get Rich Slowly and if you’re in a situation anything like mine, you’re probably in [...]
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JD – Is there a post office (USPS or private) within biking/short commuting distance for you? It might be worth it for you to sign up for a PO Box system to have the reason to leave the house every couple of days as you switch to working at home. (And you’re still at home for packages that can’t be delivered to PO Boxes).
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[...] of my favorite bloggers, J.D. over at Get Rich Slowly, had some of his mail stolen last week. His top tip? Tell your mail carrier – they can help you with the recovery steps [...]
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Hmm–the mailboxes here are secure (meaning you need a key to open)–I thought most neighborhoods were transitioning to this type of mailbox.
If not, I say get the PO Box.
That being said, I do get mail returned to me by neighbors and one time had someone call me about a package delivered to a totally different street on the other side of town.
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And even though my mailbox has a secure outgoing box, I had a previous bad experience at my old apt which had locked mailboxes but an open outgoing mail tray.
I always drop my mail off at my local post office. Even if after closing, they have slots usually open 24/7.
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[...] linked to this article at Get Rich Slowly yesterday, in passing, because it reminded me about the dangers of one’s [...]
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The people who are recommending PO boxes or mail stores have a good point.
I use the UPS Store (previously a Mail Boxes Etc.) method of dealing with mail. The only things that go to the house are things from the state, who stupidly insist that you get mail where you live, and a couple of inconsequential bills so that I have something to show the tax twits when they try to say I don’t live in my house because of the UPS Store box.
All my vital stuff goes to the UPS Store. No missing mail that I know of. I do drop mail in corner boxes when sending, as my house box is just a box with a lid. I can mail from the UPS Store also. I find the expense worth being able to receive anything from anyone. If a carrier turtle brings in a package with my name or number on it, they’ll take it. The largest item to date was a TV on a private delivery truck.
As for not being able to forward mail, that is not the fault of the private mail store. The technical term is Commercial Mail Receiving Agent (CMRA). The Post Office hates these things and paints them as dubious businesses when they can. The Post Office does not allow CMRAs to forward mail. This is deliberate in an attempt to make them seem inferior to the Post Office.
I have no complaints. Nearly a decade of reliable service. Sorry if I made this sound like an ad.
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Actually, I’ve had two different Mailboxes, Etc. franchises forward mail for me in the past. To do so, though, I had to give them a certain amount of money on deposit to pay for postage, and when that was up, they’d give me a call. They just sent a package every week or two, depending on how much mail had come. They didn’t bother forwarding junk, thankfully!
I’d done business with both locations for many years, and knew the proprietors quite well, so I don’t know if this is something they’d be willing to do for every customer, or if the laws have been tightened since the last time I had need for it.
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This is the very reason we happily dropped our Netflix 6 years ago. They decided we lived in a “high-crime” area and suspended our account for having too many missing DVDs. Of course, if we paid for the missing DVDs, they’d let us come back. We pointed out that no one in their right mind would have stolen The Red Violin twice, and that we’d moved since being a customer. And it isn’t legal to discriminate against us based on where we live for a mail-based service. They finally let us leave without making us pay for all the missing DVDs.
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A person I knew stole a tax document I’d received in the mail. It turned into a nightmare.
My advice:
-Find out everything you can about what financial documents you might be missing: was your SSN or account number on the docs, when they were mailed, etc.
-Add a verbal password to your financial accounts that could potentially be compromised. Just call customer service and ask to add a verbal password. (In my case, I didn’t do this right away, so the person used the info on my tax docs to get access to ALL my bank account numbers. Then she started printing and writing bad checks on my account!)
-DO file a police report, and get a copy of the report. They probably won’t do a thing, but if you start suffering losses, some banks will require a copy of the report.
-Don’t bother with identify theft protection. Most banks offer zero liability in fraud cases, and those services generally only cover actual losses, NOT the hours you will spend dealing with getting phony charges reversed, etc.
-Keep all relevant documents together in a single place. Document every person you speak to about this, what was said, what you asked for, what they promised to do for you.
-Ask the post office to require photo ID before accepting a change of address for you. ID theives like to re-route your mail so they can get more of your info.
-You can place a fraud alert or freeze on your credit report. Freeze is more cumbersome for you, but is airtight. A fraud alert is ignore-at-will.
-If you suspect bank account information was leaked, ask the bank if you should close/re-open your accounts.
Good luck!
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[...] is about. I encourage you to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Identity theft sucks. Our mail was stolen recently. All that we know we’re missing are some tax documents, but we’re not taking any [...]
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Sorry this happened to you but I’m glad I found this website. Today, the carrier delivered an envelope that was clearly tampered with and its contents removed. I didn’t touch the envelope and asked the carrier (who was still putting mail in our unsecured boxes) to retrieve the item and then asked him if he noticed the envelope had been tampered with. He just shrugged and said, “it happens.” I then asked him to go through his entire truck to see if “it happened” anywhere in the back. Naturally he could not find it. He then told me there was nothing I could about it.
I went down to the police station and filed a report. I know it can’t get back the check my parents sent me for my fucking BIRTHDAY, but it’s documentation of the theft. And since I was standing there while the carrier delivered the letter, it’s not like someone came by and yanked it from my box.
I’m really upset about this, not because of the money, which is replacable, but how I was treated by everyone (except the police) at the post office, who acted like it was just something that happens and I should suck it up!
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I am living in the nicest neighborhood I have ever lived in in my life right now. And, for the first time ever (that I know of) my mail has been stolen. A couple things I bought from ebay. There is nothing I can do about it. You know it is a bunch of stupid teenage druggies who are doing it too. I hope they get busted SOOOOOO BAD!
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I hope your stolen mail issues were resolved without much trouble. I found this post because I have been doing some research on mail security options. I am leaning toward investing in a secure mailbox for my home because it seems like the least amount of hassle in the long run.
I noticed some of the web page links mentioned are no longer available. Here is a site that I found that seems to have some good security mailboxes:
http://www.mailboxworks.com/CAT_Locking_Mailboxes.html
Thanks for all of the info everyone has shared – it is really helpful!
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Hello
I came across your blog entry when looking for resources as to what to do when mail gets stolen. A package containing tax forms with my SSN on it was stolen, and all the police departments in DC are refusing to file a report unless I can verify actual identity theft. I keep telling them that this is an incidence of mail theft, but it’s falling on deaf ears.
My question is, did you actually file a police report? What did you say to get them to do it? Did they come out to your house or did you have to go into a PD to file one? Thank you so much for your help, I’m pretty tore up over this.
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I have been missing all of my mail since April 12 2009 and have put a hold on our mail since may 14th. However the mail on hold at our post office has been being stolen also. They claim the postal carrier is in charge of all of our mail,and nothing can be done if it is missing. it is June8th and still the post office refuses to help and i have not received any of my mail for 2 months now. Good Luck, I think we’ve reported it to every level we can. The postal carrier checks the mail first and decides whether to keep it,deliver it ,or trash it. If you find a way to retrieve any of your mail,please let me know how you did it.
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US mail service has been rapidly declining. At work, we don’t get invoices vendors say they have mailed. Our customers aren’t getting the invoices we mail out.
At home, I’m not getting everything I should have received and there’s always someone else’s mail in by box; either from same-number-different-street, same-street-different-number or entirely random.
I’m convinced the post office does all their hiring from the “list of unemployable” at the unemployment office.
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The post office boxes only work if the postal workers put your mail in your box and not in someone elses box. I recently had some books shipped to me at my PO box but never received them. Someone else did. They were put in the wrong box. The person who received them was so kind to mail me the invoce for them along with a note that the invoice was in their box of books that they received. Can you believe that? I found out that the only way your are protected is if the mail is insured; otherwise, there isn’t anything that the post office will do.
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I found this site as I just had mail stolen a couple hours ago and am trying to figure out what to do about it.
Strangely enough, we have the old fashoned mail slot that comes into the house. It’s right next to a huge window and the front door and yes, someone still came all the way up stole our Netflix that we were returning while we were home even!
They were hanging out the flap about 3 inches. I noticed they were gone around 2:30 and thought the mail had come and we just didn’t get any today. When the mail man showed up at 4:00 with mail, we ran out and asked if he or some other post man had already picked up our outgoing mail. He said no and we said crap.
I can’t belive someone would come up to our house, next to our huge window while we are home and steal something as silly as Netflix! What guts they have. The funny thing is that it was Dexter and Grey’s Anatomy. Not realy worth stealing…
Not sure if I should report it or not but I’m sure not putting my outgoing mail in my slot ever again. I’ll drive to the Post Office from now on.
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I’ve had problems with my PO Box! The PO clerk erroneously filled out a change of address form on MY box! When I received the notification, I hit the roof! This is the second mistake she’s made on my box (the first wasn’t as serious, but still . . .) I no longer feel safe with the USPS – I’m going to the UPS Store!!!!
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