Here's a little background information. My parents sold our home about 13 years ago. We rented a house for a year before moving in to our new one. During that time period, we used a post office box. Once we moved in to our new permanent home, most of our mail would then come to our house. I decided to keep the post office box. My mom, my sister and I had keys to it. My sister got married 8 years ago and now my mom has the key she had.
One of the postal workers called my dad on Tuesday saying that someone came into the post office Monday afternoon with a key to our box saying that the box renewal was due and since the fees had gone up, he wanted to close the box and have the mail forwarded. Something didn't seem right to the postal worker, so he called to verify. My dad doesn't use the box and had no idea what was going on. He called me and explained what the worker had told him. I went to the post office that afternoon. We live in a small town, and the worker said something just didn't seem right to him. The key that was turned in, fits our box. In fact, the worker just gave me the key, so now we have 4 of them. As far as I know, he didn't make any notations about that either. I know that if you lose a post office box key and try to close the box, they can charge you quite a bit to change the lock.
I don't get any important mail at the box, but I use it for mostly personal correspondence. And for an address to use when filling out forms online. But the more I think about this whole thing, the angrier I get. There was someone that had access to my mail. Mail that I was paying to keep safe. How could this have happened? The key that was turned in, is very shiny. It has all the USPS stampage on it with the same numerical code on it that I have. Every month or two, I would get a generic letter in the box addressed to a man. I never opened them, but would bring them into the post office and tell them it wasn't my mail. It wouldn't happen often, and it sort of looked like junk mail envelopes. I usually only check the mail there once or twice a week. Sometimes it would be a couple of weeks. The box would usually be stuffed full of stuff. I don't understand why this other person would never have said anything about receiving so much mail addressed to me.
For him to want to have mail forwarded, the post office has to have a name and address. What recourse do I have? What do I do? I am starting to feel very violated. I don't want to get anyone in trouble, especially since everyone knows everyone here in town. And it was an alert postal worker that discovered this. I just don't know what to do. Am I overreacting? Am I underreacting? If someone came and looked at mail in the mailbox at the end of the driveway, that would be a federal offense. What can I do about someone else having access to my post office box?
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