mailbox broken into

My mailbox was broken into within the last few days. I'm in building 460.

Thanks for the heads up.

Was it just your mailbox or the whole panel? If just yours, was it pryed open? Did you contact the postoffice? They own the mailboxes and will be responsible for investigating.

I'm not sure if any other mailboxes were involved. But my lock is completely broken and doesn't lock anymore making it easy to pry open. Peachtree says the lock is the owner responsibility to replace. Does this sound right?

I came back from vacation today and found out that my mailbox was also broken - not sure when it was done. From the look of it, the culprit tried to pry open individual mailbox units and not the entire panel itself. I can see similar pry marks around some other "outer" mailboxes as well - not sure if they are broken or ok.

I spoke with the mail delivery man who said that this method - prying open individual mailboxes, usually the ones on the outside with easier access to pry them open - seems to be common these days. He told me that the "newer" mailboxes have bolts holding the lockbar (that attaches the lock to the main panel) and those are not easy to pry open. He showed me the boxes and told me that the "older" ones (mine was an older one) - the ones without the bolt - seem to be the ones that the thief is able to break open. Anyways, I would recommend that you check your mailboxes and make sure they lock shut. The thief also seems to have done it in a clever way - if you are in a hurry and just use your key to open the box and then "lock" it back, you may not even notice that it doesn't lock shut.

I went to the postoffice. They said that there are other homeowners that have reported mailbox breakins in our community recently. They asked me to put my mail delivery on hold and work with the property management company to get the lock replaced.

I spoke with Tony from Peachtree. He said he will be here in the complex with his mailbox guy on Thursday - 3/15 and check this out and work with the board on getting this fixed. Hopefully this will be taken care of soon - short-term (getting the lock fixed so that the mailbox is usable again) and long-term (preventing this in the future if anything can be done about it).