Mail Services at CSAIL

TIG is a Distributed Mail Center (DMC) which serves as the central delivery and pickup point for CSAIL mail.

United States Postal Service (USPS)

Individual MIT buildings (with a few exceptions, Stata is not one of the exceptions) are not serviced directly by the United States Postal Service. In fact, most of our buildings are not even on a postal route. This means that the letter carriers do not even enter our buildings. If a street address for one of our buildings is given as an address, it is not unusual, for the package to be delayed up to two days since it needs to be routed through WW-15.

• Exceptions: The MIT policy for “Accountable” US mail (things that require a signature: Express Mail, Certified Mail, Registered Mail but not delivery confirmation mail) is as follows:

“If MIT Mail Services signs for something, then the customer will also need to sign for it. If MIT Mail services does not sign for it, then it is considered first class mail and delivered according to the normal procedures, for CSAIL this is a daily bulk dropoff that TIG will sort and deliver.

• As far as MIT and the USPS is concerned Priority Mail, delivery confirmation mail, and first class mail are all standard mail

• The term delivery confirmation mail is a complete misnomer in an university environment because the Post Office delivers packages to us in bulk, so they scan items as “delivered” and are then placed into a large rolling bin to be trucked over to WW-15. The confusion this causes is that a piece may say delivered when tracked via the USPS website, but in fact it is still sitting in the main Cambridge Post Office. This is especially difficult if the mail arrives right before or after a holiday.

Ground deliveries from FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc.

-For CSAIL, Ground delivery is brought directly to the mail room in the basement. TIG retrieves this mail, sorts and then delivers it by 1PM. We are then called after the afternoon delivery arrives and we repeat the process above.

Addressing mail to CSAIL

See MIT Mail Services for addressing informaiton.

Finding a package

• Sender’s name and address
• How the sender addressed the package
• Delivery service, (UPS, USPS, Fed Ex, Freight Forwarding Company)
• The tracking information provided by the delivery company.
• The rough dimensions (height, depth, length, and weight of the package.
• All of this information will help us help you faster

Mail Box Locations

CSAIL also has two Mail Box Locations

• USPS in the gates lobby
• FedEx Shipping/Receiving in basement