Back in July 2018, I penned an article about why you need USPS Informed Delivery. This article was about how the free service saved my marriage proposal, by giving me visibility into what would be in my mailbox that afternoon. It was the first bill for the engagement ring I purchased, and as luck would have it, I was well over 1,000 miles away from home, conveniently at a USPS trade show in San Antonio, TX. Give it a read when you have a moment.
This article, however, will highlight how USPS Informed Delivery saved my butt -- again.
Several weeks ago, I was the victim of a porch pirate. He stole a huge box full of dog food (hope he was hungry) from my front porch. By the time my Ring doorbell activated, he was turning around and I could not get a good shot of him. Later that afternoon I added a couple more cameras to the front of my house in the hopes of capturing better images of any future would-be thieves.
Lo and behold, two days later on the following Friday, I noticed a woman walking up my driveway, on my cameras. I could not see exactly what she was doing, but she was standing at the door, next to my mailbox. By the time I was able to activate the Ring doorbell so that I could ask her what she needed, she’d already stolen some of my mail. While I was fumbling to get my Ring activated, I missed that small detail.
I spoke with her, she was a little odd, but I wasn’t going to pass judgement. From the looks of it, things were on the up and up and she was only there to drop off some flyers for my fiancé. I didn’t think too much about it, finished my day here at U-PIC, and went home.
Upon retrieving my mail, it occurred to me immediately that things were missing. Earlier in the morning, I looked at my USPS Informed Delivery Daily Digest email as I do every day. The Daily Digest is sent every morning, and it has scanned images (see below) showing the mail pieces that are on the way. My email normally hits my inbox around 8:30am.
Knowing for sure that some mail was missing, I went back to my cameras to get a closer look, and I realized that before I was able to activate my Ring doorbell, my other cameras captured her fumbling through my mailbox and stealing some letters.
Luck was on my side, though. My next door neighbor, who was aware of my previous theft from a couple of days before, happened to be leaving and noticed the woman at my door, and a car parked just north of my house, out of view of my cameras. She had the presence of mind to snap a picture of the license plate. This, combined with the images that I captured from my camera system --- and USPS’s Informed Delivery; gave me everything I needed to not only file a police report, but for the police to identify the suspect and put a warrant out for her arrest.
None of this would be possible without the USPS and their Informed Delivery product. I would not have thought to review the cameras again.
It’s free, and if you don’t have it already, sign up for it here. U-PIC Shipping Insurance is already a partner of the USPS, and we enjoy a very close working relationship with them. Things like this only make that relationship stronger, and I have to say -- Informed Delivery is absolutely amazing. So simple, yet SO powerful.
To our friends at the USPS, thank you so much for this amazing product!
