After receiving calls and texts from frustrated residents about the drop-off in mail deliveries, WWL sought to track down people who were having issues.
Several people have told us they’ve had packages, paychecks, and even mail delivery overall go M.I.A.
"Now we go day's without mail the service went to crap," one person texted 870870.
Another said, "No mail since late last week."
One person texted, saying they work at the post office. "As a mail carrier headed to work now. We don't have enough carriers showing up."
Another told us on Facebook, " I hadn’t received mail in almost a week and I got some yesterday I’m looking for my medicine to be delivered."
Claire is a working mom with a toddler, she came down to the Post Office to pick up her business’ mail. She initially said there haven’t been any interruptions with her business mail.
But as for mail delivery at her home, that’s a different story.
“Man…Yeah, mail delivery’s been really bad at our house come to think of it,” Claire says. “My husband told me we get the ‘informed delivery’ emails. And I don’t think we’ve had mail delivered to our house in four days or something, and we were supposed to!”
Dino’s been having all kinds of problems.
“I’ve had some strangely delayed shipments in the last few weeks,” Dino begins. “A couple of checks, two months in a row, ended up at the wrong place, one didn’t get to me. One they had to send again.”
When told about the issue of letter carriers not showing up to work because some are reportedly sick and others are reportedly staying at home with the children—who are out of school thanks to the stay home orders from the governor, Dino responded, “But I hadn’t connected it to COVID until you brought it up,” Dino says. “I think its understandable, but I think they need to find a way to make the mail more reliable.”
Ahmad is a businessman who relies on dependable package delivery from the Post Office. A package has gone missing, and he’s not happy.
“I received the mail and it wasn’t with the mail, which was very strange to me because I had other packages delivered it wasn’t amongst those packages,” Ahmad says explaining the Postal Service stated his package would be delivered by 8am Wednesday morning.
Now it’s almost 5pm Wednesday afternoon and he’s at the Post Office looking for his package.
“They told me if it doesn’t make it to my house by 8pm tonight, which I’m not sure if it will,” Ahmad says. “They said if it not at my house, then it will be [at the Post Office] tomorrow morning. Which is a hassle in itself!”
Ahmad says this isn’t the first time things have gone sideways getting the mail:
“There have been other problems, I’ve had packages that have been marked ‘out for delivery’ for the beginning half of the day, but they’ve been changed for the next day, so they’ve been delayed.”
Ahmad understands people wanting to be at home with their kids, but he has to rely on the Postal Service as the lifeline of his business.
Still, others are choosing to dump USPS altogether.
One of Dino’s clients sent him an email explaining: “Actually today, I had one guy say he doesn’t trust sending any checks in the mail at this point, he’s doing all his business on line. Venmo, Paypal, Etcetera.”
Calls to the USPS Media Relations line were not returned by deadline.
