If you haven't yet signed up for the USPS Informed Delivery service, I highly recommend it. Essentially, every morning of scheduled postal delivery, they do a scan of whatever snail mail is scheduled to be delivered to you (minus some junk that won't go through their scanners, of course) and send you an email with the image of each piece of mail you should expect in your mail box every day... except when it doesn't arrive, as happened to me this week.
The letter I missed is probably some kind of junk, but it was addressed to my business name, and the return address just said it was from "Bill Payment" (from Cromwell, CT). I was hoping it was some kind of e-check from a client who had told me a few days before that payment would be sent out right away, but it's tough to know. I managed to run into my postman the next day, but when I asked him about it, he just said he wasn't working the day before. He gave me the phone number to the local post office, but when I call it just disconnects. Fun...
Naturally, I'll check back with my client, but this whole adventure has me wondering how often this might be a factor with non-payment. It still might just be junk mail, but while dealing with this, I thought I'd pass on info about this service, in case it's something others are interested in, if available in your area... I'm pretty sure I signed up for this online. (I certainly didn't do it over the phone!)
If a check ever went missing, we'd never know about it without something like this. (For example, when we have a fill-in postman, mail often ends up being delivered to the wrong box, so anything could happen...)
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