By Victoria Stavish
At a City Council work session, College Park post office representatives promised improvements to local operations, blaming low mail carrier retention rates and COVID-19 for inconsistent mail delivery – but residents believe the problems run much deeper.
The College Park mayor and council spoke to Regional Director of Post Office Operations John Campbell and Supervisor of College Park Post Offices Chris D’Ambrosia at their virtual work session on April 20.
In recent years, the city council has received complaints from residents and sent letters to the U.S. Postal Service and federal representatives regarding the poor condition of the Calvert Road Post Office building, theft of mail from post office boxes, mail delivery issues and customer service issues at the North College Park Post Office location, according to city council documents.
“I have experienced myself getting mail at eight o’clock at night, or we wouldn’t get mail for three days in a row,” said District Four City Council member Denise Mitchell.
Mitchell said that she has called the post office multiple times with complaints from her constituents and has never heard back.
“We have seniors who are not getting their social security checks or payments sent to utility service companies were never received, so they have to pay a late service fee for their credit card bill … I have a whole litany of emails that have been sent to me, going back to the customer service at the post office with a lack of phone calls being made and no one calling back to the residents,” Mitchell said.
Other College Park residents, such as Eugene Chay of Hollywood College Park, reported having similar problems with delayed and misdelivered mail since he arrived in the city in August. He said that when he asked fellow residents about his issues with the mail, their responses did not inspire much hope.
“A lot of people seemed to be commenting that they have just grown to accept this as a way of life,” Chay said.
Chay said that residents told him not to expect bills or checks to be delivered on time and to, instead, pay bills through the internet. What Chay learned from his neighbors discouraged him from filing complaints.
“I’ve just accepted it. I don’t even know where to run up the chain,” Chay said.
Carla Jensen, a resident of North College Park for over 20 years, said that the post office has never responded to her complaints.
“I started complaining in early March. I did it several times over the weeks. I’d give them a week or two for something to happen. Nothing happens,” Jensen said.
At the recent city council work session, Campbell addressed the issues of misdelivery and inconsistency from College Park mail carriers, citing COVID-19 as a large contributor to inconsistent service in the past year.
“With the virtual learning for last year, it really limited our employees because there was no daycare for a long period of time, and we were really short staffed to a point where it definitely impacted service,” Campbell said. “The replacement carriers that we have, and that we’re currently getting, there’s a learning curve.”
Campbell said that only about 56% of new hires are making it through the first 90 days of the job, which is also known as the probationary period. During this time, new mail carriers go through a criminal background check and training on how to properly and effectively deliver mail which Campbell calls the “learning curve”.
Both the required criminal background check and the learning curve damage the retention rate of new hires at local post offices.
During the city council meeting, D’Ambrosia addressed customer service concerns from residents who use the North College Park Post Office, saying that they are training employees, both in groups and individually, to reach higher standards.
“I’m going to be honest with you, it has been an uphill battle. We are starting to see some trends in the positive direction in that area. Again, not to the standards I’m happy with, and I have relayed that repeatedly to our team,” D’Ambrosia said.
Despite improvements, which also include higher security mail drop boxes and active investigations into stolen mail in the area, residents such as Chay lack confidence that more consistent mail delivery will become reality.
“It [inconsistent mail delivery] doesn’t seem to me to be an issue of inexperienced personnel, it seems to be a problem with inattentive or careless workers or something else going on that is endemic to the system,” Chay said.
Looking ahead, representatives like Campbell and D’Ambrosia will be talking with the College Park City Council more consistently in the future to improve post office operations.
At the virtual work session, College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn said that he wants USPS representatives to share updates and improvements with residents consistently, because he wants residents to know that local USPS representatives, “understand that there are problems that you’re working to resolve.”
D’Ambrosia, who lives in College Park and supervises the College Park post offices, also said that he and his staff will be making increased efforts to be more responsive to complaints from residents because he recognizes the value of the customer.
“Every paycheck that a Postal Service employee receives says ‘from our customers’ on the back of it. Without your service, without the security of your mail, without the proper treatment of your customers, we don’t have a job,” D’Ambrosia said.
Featured photo: The Calvert Road Post Office location in College Park. Victoria Stavish/Stories Beneath the Shell.