[StBernard] Post Office delivery remains an iffy proposition

Westley Annis westley at da-parish.com
Sat Apr 21 20:28:22 EDT 2007


NEW ORLEANS — My CityBusiness is usually delivered to my Kenner
mailbox about two weeks late. I still haven’t seen my April 9 edition
as this column goes to press April 20. So it surprised me when the New
Orleans U.S. Postal Service reported it has “regained all of our old
traction” and “mail service in New Orleans is good.”
The USPS must define traction differently than most of us out here
waiting for deliveries. Now don’t go postal on me fellas, but it’s
not all good. The mail goes through rain, sleet and gloom of night but
it’s still gummed up pretty good 20 months post-Katrina.
How bad is it? Bad enough that USPS spokesman Dave Lewin would prefer
not to detail the problems. Lewin first told me he had no idea how many
complaints were received this year compared with the same time in 2005.
Then he said he was “not allowed” to release such information. When
told his boss on the federal level had already approved the release,
Lewin promised to get back to me with the numbers.
I’m still waiting. Maybe he mailed them to me. I’ll look for them
sometime next week. I’ll let you know when I get the information.
Delivering the mail is at once an easy task and a daunting one. The easy
part? How tough is it to stuff a letter in a mailbox? Well, delivering
billions, probably trillions of a product can’t be easy. Then rip off
hundreds of street signs, displace hundreds of thousands of customers,
erase thousands of addresses and it becomes a really complicated task.
So far, at least judging by performance, it’s still a relatively
impossible job for the USPS.
As Lee Randall of New Orleans writes in Monday's Letters to the Editor:
“As a customer, the test is simple — either you are delivering all
of the mail in a timely manner or you are not. Until you are (and you
definitely are not currently doing it), mail service is NOT good.”
The best way to deal with any shortcoming is first to admit it exists
and then to discuss how you are trying to improve.
The good news is mail delivery in the New Orleans metro area is more
effective than the Pony Express. Here’s hoping the bar is raised in
the next few months.
If you have problems with your mail (Where is my CityBusiness?), you can
call (877) 640-0724. Let me know how your complaints turns out. So far,
the Post Office won’t.



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