HOUSTON — Judy Paskins hasn’t had a single card or bill delivered to her new home in an upscale Katy subdivision since moving there six months ago from Michigan.
It’s not because old friends or bill collectors have forgotten her. The 62-year-old retired nurse is just one of hundreds of families in new developments surrounding Houston being forced to wait for the U.S. Postal Service to install cluster mailboxes.
“On average, we have homeowners waiting from six to eight months for their mailboxes,” Susan Vreeland-Wendt, director of marketing for The Woodlands Development Co., told the Houston Chronicle.
The Postal Service is responsible for erecting the cluster boxes, which became mandatory for new developments in 2012 as a means to off-set some of the agency’s $40 billion debt. A congressional committee working on postal-reform bills found that delivering to cluster mailboxes cost less than half of doorstep service — $160 per address compared to $353 an address per year, officials say. The switch is expected to save the Postal Service around $4 billion annually.
The nationwide shortage started after the Postal Service, which had historically manufactured the locks, decided last year to outsource to a new supplier, said Patricia Licata, a Postal Service spokeswoman in Washington, D.C. The Postal Service declined to give the manufacturer’s name or reason for the backlog, citing security concerns.
Several homeowners said Katy-area postal workers have told them that even if the locks are made readily available that they are too understaffed to install the cluster boxes and service the routes.
via US Postal Service unable to provide mailboxes for spate of new Houston-area housing – Daily Journal.
I agree. They are all brother in laws in Houston. Lazy workers with attitude and management is even worst. You get worst service in Houston Post Offices than you would get in 3rd world countries. They don’t even know about their products as much as I do when I go to the post office. Maybe they are treated this way as they treat us (customers), guessing. Culture needs to be changed.
Sounds like another “Brother-in-Law” contract. The only one benefiting from his arrangement is the contractor who is allowed to fail miserably and continue to be employed.
And Congress wants the post office to offer financial services?
Just another wrong way for the Postal Service to cut corners.
When will the Postal Board of Gov.’s see what is taking place
inside Postal Headquarters. I believe if the PMG can get just
one more VP we can get things moving.
More inefficiency, ineptness, corruption, and unethical behavoir from USPS mgmt/eas.
As usual, none of them will be held accountable.
the key words: “congressional committee”
slow moving, slow to act, slow group, short bus attitude