The US Postal Service and Hurricane Katrina

Two stories involving the US Postal Service.

1) Received a check today from a retailer in New Orleans that sent the check to our New Orleans (flooded) address on December 27th. It arrived in Austin on February 11th. It's hard enough to stay in business when the federal government poorly designs a levee system and floods your home and office...then the post office doesn't properly forward your mail.

2) I sent out a direct mail piece by first class mail from Austin on December 8th to thousands of people. Every day I receive several pieces of that back to the return address in Austin that say "insufficient address...return to sender". They were sent to people in New Orleans who certainly have forwarding orders in place (many are friends who I asked). Why am I receiving them (returned to sender) over two months later? Is it easier for the USPS to send them back than to send them to the forwarding machines?

Sure glad USPS first class went up to $0.39.