Nine of the borough’s post offices were recently under review for poor mail delivery and customer retail service.
The United States Postal Service recently completed their audit report of Delivery and Customer Service Operations – Bronx New York (labelled Project Number 17RG008DR000) pertaining to nine post office stations in the south Bronx.
The Bronx locations which were under review included the Bronx General Post Office as well as the Boulevard, Hub, Hunts Point, Morrisania, Mott Haven, Soundview, Tremont and West Farms stations.
Four of the post office locations, including the Bronx General Post Office, have provided residents with poor delivery and customer service in categories including limited access, insecure mailboxes, waiting times in line (greater than five minutes), high number of unclaimed packages, inefficient package storage and unsent Postal Service Form 3849 final notifications.
Out of the 13,395 customer complaints regarding mail delivery and customer services at post office and stations that the New York District received, nearly 500 complaints pertained to the troublesome Bronx stations.
Out of the 491 complaints, 298 highlighted untimely mail delivery and 127 described unprofessional behavior by Postal Service employees.
Each of the nine post offices have provided poor delivery and customer service in at least three of the categories listed above.
The Tremont station has the longest waiting time in line out of the nine locations, with the maximum wait time exceeding two hours and an average wait time of one hour and twenty minutes.
In total, approximately 2,345 keys have been used by the nine stations, which go on a total of 150 routes. Morrisania station has the most routes – with 29.
The audit summarized that mail was not always delivered in a timely manner by carriers at these nine locations primarily because parcel route carriers lacked access to many buildings.
Additionally, some buildings with damaged or unsecured mailboxes made it difficult for the carriers to deliver mail to those particular addresses.
The audit also confirmed that retail customers faced long wait times in line averaging between 7 to 56 minutes.
Customers picking up packages experienced even longer wait times averaging between 12 minutes and two hours.
According to the USPS, the goal is to delivery approximately 96.5% of mail on time, while a customer should experience more than five minutes of wait time for domestic transactions involving retail services.
To improve service in the future, the USPS will coordinate with building owners or managers to comply with Postal Service access and mail receptacle policies, evaluate existing package storing methods to ensure efficiency, provide refresher training to USPS staff and conduct additional community outreach activities to address complaints, provide additional information and come up with solutions to improve the customer experience.
The UPSP is also planning on purchasing new mailboxes to replace damaged or unsecured mailboxes in public housing developments.
When mail is unable to be delivered, carriers must complete Postal Service Form 3849 and place it in the customer’s mailbox, providing an attempted delivery date, carrier’s initials and route number, as well as the reason for non-delivery.
Carriers are then supposed to return the undelivered package back to the post office station for redelivery or pick up by the customer.
Any additional attempt for delivery is made only if the addressee requests it.
If the package is not redelivered or picked up by the customer within 15 days, the package is returned to the sender.
Councilman Rafael Salamanca, former district manager of Community Board 2, could not be reached for comment, but a spokesperson said that his office is aware of the situation and pleased with the audit. According to reports, the audit was at Salamanca’s request from 2016.
