Delegate Norton says that “constituents throughout the District of Columbia have been experiencing difficulties receiving their mail consistently and properly.”

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According to the U.S. Post Office’s unofficial motto, “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” but Washingtonians in all four of the city’s quadrants say that their mail services have been less than reliable and, sometimes, nonexistent.

D.C. residents in neighborhoods as various as Eckington, Anacostia, Cleveland Park, and Michigan Park have been complaining about a lack of proper and consistent mail services, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton says in a letter to Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan sent on Thursday evening.

“I understand customers often do not even receive their mail at all on certain days,” Norton writes. “The most common complaints include late evening deliveries, failed delivery, and damaged mail.”

A cursory look at Norton and other D.C. officials’ Twitter mentions—which often double as a modern form of constituent services—show some of residents’ concerns with the quality of their mail service.

https://twitter.com/Lookkuss/status/1072246377814601729

In her letter, Norton goes on to say that, “Especially troubling is the repeated lack of responsiveness by station managers to customers. I understand that phones are frequently not answered when my constituents call to make complaints, and, when they go to the post offices themselves, they are not allowed to speak to managers or are told they are unavailable and managers do not return messages.”

The Postal Service has not responded to a request for comment about this letter, but told DCist recently that it “recognizes timely and accurate deliveries are paramount to our customers. Other than the suspension of most mail deliveries on Dec. 5, the date the Postal Service recognized a Day of Mourning in honor of President George H.W. Bush, the Postal Service has been expanding deliveries to earlier in the morning and later in the evening in December to ensure customers receive mail at the earliest date possible.”

Norton is considering holding a new forum with a representative of the postal service to address these issues, per her office, but this isn’t a new problem.

Norton wrote to U.S. Postal Service in 2017 about unreliable mail delivery and issues with management at the Friendship Heights, Cleveland Park, and Tenleytown Post Offices, using similar wording to her current letter. That resulted in a forum with the community and a representative of the U.S. Postal Service.

Additionally, in 2014, she held a roundtable with D.C.’s postmaster to discuss “customer service, after-dark mail delivery, lost and stolen mail, letter carrier safety, and responsiveness to customers’ concerns.”

A 2016 audit from the Postal Service’s inspector general put both the Capital and Northern Virginia districts near the top of a list of the most at-risk districts for retail customer service. Inspectors found that mail was not properly scanned or handled properly, units did not meet the target time for having mail ready for distribution or collection, and there were issues with long wait times and inaccurate business hours posted.

The D.C. region also ranked as number one in late mail delivery in 2014.

During fiscal year 2018, the Capital District saw a total of 963,802,714 ongoing letters (which amounts to an average of nearly 1,373 outgoing letters per D.C. resident) and 1,037,197,182 incoming letters (almost 1,478 incoming letters per D.C. resident on average).

Reporting contributed by Dave Stroup.

Filed Under: eleanor holmes norton, mail, postal service,