A USPS customer said that because a mail carrier was bitten by a dog near or on her property (a detail she’s still trying to confirm) she can no longer have packages delivered to her house.
The trouble is, however, that Emily (@emilily88) doesn’t have a dog, she said in a viral TikTok. Whenever she tried to get a straight answer from USPS, she said she was ultimately just given the runaround.
Emily explained how she discovered USPS didn’t want to deliver to her home any longer in the first place. She said she first noticed that something was amiss with her address when she saw a package from Amazon wasn’t being delivered to her home.
The retailer gave her the option to retry the delivery, but the attempt was unsuccessful. After reaching out to see what was up, she said she was informed she was on a “dog cut off” due to a “mail carrier” being “bitten by a dog outside” of her house.
Emily informed a representative on the phone that she doesn’t have a dog and she never has in all the years that she’s lived on her property. The person on the other line purportedly replied that even if it was a stray, there was a mail carrier who was indeed harmed while attempting to deliver mail to her home. Emily said she was told she should have received warning letters prior to being cut off but claims she didn’t.
This puzzled Emily, as she said she lived in a populated neighborhood and that all of her neighbors were still receiving their mail. She said she questioned how the policy was fair, especially since the rep mentioned that even if it was a “stray” that harmed one of the carriers, this was linked to her address and the future of her mail deliveries hinged on USPS’ decision.
“I’m like so there was a police report filed about an incident that happened on my property and I was never told about it? And no one from the police or animal control or anyone came by to like, check into this dog biting incident?” she asked.
Seeing the entire ordeal as a strange inconvenience she’d just have to deal with temporarily, Emily said she decided to accept her fate and then asked the rep how long she was going to be banned. The answer she received wasn’t one that any homeowner would want to hear.
“We’ll never come to your house again,” the person on the phone allegedly told her.
@emilily88 #fyp #usps #uspsproblems #uspshelp #advice #postoffice #cutoff ♬ original sound – Emily
Emily learned she’d been forever blacklisted for the dog-biting ordeal, which is a policy she said made zero sense to her. If she did, in fact, own a mail-carrier-biting-pooch, then wouldn’t that pooch go out of their way to chomp on the mail carrier at the new address, she wondered?
The rep informed her that this rule was put in place to keep carriers safe, and Emily agreed that while she doesn’t want mail carriers getting bitten by dogs, she doesn’t understand why a stray dog is “being tied to [her] house.”
To make matters more vague and frustrating, Emily said that she hasn’t been able to speak to the mail carrier in question who was bitten by the dog and that she doesn’t have any cameras outside of her home that could’ve recorded the incident.
She asked her followers what she should do about the incident and if there was any recourse she could take to contest the decision. She said the post office rep told her she could always come by a USPS location to pick up her packages, but the problem is that the office is only open between the hours of 8am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, which just so happens to be what her work schedule is.
One TikToker who responded to her video accused her of lying about the incident, to which Emily replied with a follow-up clip that showed off a notice from the post office that shows her mail was undeliverable due to their being a “dog cut off.”
Emily stated in yet another video updating her followers about the incident that an additional conversation with USPS left her even ultimately more confused about the incident. She told USPS that she spoke with animal control and that they didn’t have a report about the incident, to which the rep on the phone said the dog biting “happened so long ago,” which is why there wasn’t any record of this occurring.
@emilily88 Replying to @HellfireQueen95 ♬ original sound – Emily
This inconsistency wasn’t one that Emily was going to let slide—if the dog-biting occurred long ago, then how was it that she was told the mail carrier was attacked “extremely recently” and that when she did contact animal control the only information they could give her is that there was a dog reported in the area around the time she heard the occurrence “initially” happened?
Emily said the rep corrected her and that the issue was being “carried over” from “years ago” but she still didn’t accept this as an answer, asking why she had only just received a ban.
She said the rep explained it may have had to do with a new mail carrier being assigned to her home and that previous carriers probably did not know about the ban or chose to ignore it.
Emily ended her video saying she was flabbergasted by the different responses she received from USPS, but that she had involved a member of her city’s council to look into the issue and she’s waiting to hear back from them.
Several viewers offered suggestions that could help her in her quest to have mail delivered to her property again. For one of the commenters, it was all about logging necessary and relevant documentation.
“Request the police report and ask USPS the exact date the mailman got bit,” they suggested.
Another person said that every time a mail carrier is bitten, they likely slap the owner of the dog or property with some type of legal paperwork.
“Mailmen who are bitten always sue, if you never got a claim then they have the wrong address,” they wrote.
This was a sentiment echoed by another user who wrote, “Sounds like they are confusing your house with someone else’s house I’d go to the police station and ask for the report if it’s about you.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to USPS via email and Emily via TikTok comment.