The following is a true story. In fact, I’m not even taking creative license to embellish. This is a ‘cut and paste’ story that really happened. By the time you finished reading this article, you’ll either want to run out and sign up for Informed Delivery or you should go back to watching 80’s movies on your VHS player and hoping the Internet is just a passing fad.
THE STORY: I’m Matt Morelli, the Business Development Director at U-PIC Shipping Insurance (U-PIC.com). I was turned onto USPS Informed Delivery by a colleague a couple of months back and thought it would be an interesting service. Though, I didn’t expect much from it, as it wasn’t immediately evident to me what the value would be. Who really wants to know, on Monday morning, right when you get to the office, what bills you will have to deal with when you get home anyway?
Fast forward a few weeks, and to say that the service exceeded my expectations greatly, would be a severe understatement.
In mid-April, I purchased an engagement ring for my girlfriend. I put half of the cost down in cash and financed the rest. I suppose I should have asked the jeweler, but I figured the invoices would show up in discreet envelopes seeing as that would be…well, LOGICAL, considering the circumstances. I was wrong.
When the first invoice was put in the mail, I was exactly 1,379.5 miles away, at the USPS National Postal Forum in San Antonio. And by the way, my girlfriend (fiancée now, in case you were wondering) and I live together, which means no matter how hard I tried, she would get to the mail before me and the entire proposal would be ruined.
I checked my email and saw an invoice from the jewelry store in the Informed Delivery notification. My eyes grew large, my palms were sweaty, knees weak, arms were heavy and I did what every other grown man would do when he needed help — I called my mom.
I called her fast, I called her loud, and I called her with a sense of urgency like none other.
Mom: “Hello.”
Matt: “Mom. MOM. MOOOOOM! I need you to please, please, for the love of god please go to my house immediately and steal my mail! The invoice for the ring will be showing up today and Jess still doesn’t know about it!”
She dropped what she was doing and rushed over to my house. The challenge? The invoice hadn’t been delivered. So, she enlisted the help of my next-door neighbor who works from home (thanks my dude!). When the mail carrier arrived, he ran over to my house, took the invoice and held it for me until I got home.
*wipes sweat from brow*
She never caught on, she never knew a thing!
Fast forward to a few weeks later, I took a knee at the foot of the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland, and asked my girlfriend, to be my wife. She said yes. And I can absolutely give some credit to the United States Postal Service and this amazing Informed Delivery service for saving the day! Without this outstanding, life-changing FREE program…my entire proposal would have been ruined. The plan that I had in place, to give her the BEST proposal…would have been completely ruined.
USPS — Thank you, seriously, so much…for this awesome service!
Big thanks to Matt Morelli at matt@u-pic.com for entertaining us with this great example of how Informed Delivery saved the day. To create your free Informed Delivery account, go to https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action. To find out how you can improve your direct mail response by using Informed Delivery, call U.S. Mailing House.