Getting your postal mail in the evening in West Seattle lately? Here’s why

(WSB photo: Westwood Village post office)
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor

Last night, our U.S. Postal Service mail arrived at 6:30 pm. A few nights earlier, it arrived after 8 pm. Several WSB readers have e-mailed mentioning the same thing, and wondering why they’re getting deliveries so much later than before. Today, we have the answer. Our inquiry to the regional media-relations rep was referred to a USPS supervisor who’s been working out of the Junction Post Office branch, Janet Doyle, who had all the answers, plus a few datapoints we hadn’t heard before:

Westwood Village, it turns out, handles delivery for all but one of the zip codes in West Seattle. 98106, 98126, 98136, 98146 postal mail all goes out from the USPS facility along SW Trenton. 98116 is the only zip code delivered from the Junction Post Office on California SW.

Because of West Seattle’s population growth, Westwood has just gone through a “route adjustment,” Doyle said, adding at least seven full delivery routes to the ~85 it was already handling. That’s meant not just redrawing maps, but hiring more help, “because we don’t just have the people to put into those (new) jobs.” Some of the hires are “carrier assistants,” according to Doyle, part-time workers whose training spans more days because of the part-time schedule.

Compounding that, May through September is prime vacation time, per contract, for USPS full-timers, with 20 percent of the work force off at any given time, according to Doyle.

The average route, by the way, has up to 1,000 homes, with letter carriers doing a “park and loop,” about two blocks worth of mail in the pouch, and organizing the mail to make sure it’s in the correct order for the new routes is yet another part of the process.

Add all that up, and it’s led to the late deliveries – the national standard is that you’re supposed to get the mail by 5 pm, but lately, Doyle acknowledged, the Westwood situation has led to mail as late as what we noticed that one recent night, 8:30 pm.

She says they hope to normalize within a few more weeks, especially as carriers come back from vacation, looking ahead to the busy fall. They’ve tried to supplement the Westwood routes with carrier assistants from elsewhere, even the Junction post office.

Westwood isn’t the only post office experiencing this, she added – several other local branches are dealing with “major growth,” including, you won’t be surprised to hear, Ballard.

P.S. One of our region’s booming-est businesses, Amazon, figures into USPS workload in another way; as an aside, Doyle points out that when you see USPS carriers/trucks on Sundays, they’re delivering parcels from Amazon.

ocean September 18, 2014 (12:10 pm)

As long as my love letters arrive, I don’t care what time they are delivered!
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= )

Judy September 18, 2014 (12:12 pm)

Thanks for getting the answers to a situation that has been frustrating us for weeks! Good reporting!!

kjb September 18, 2014 (12:18 pm)

26th Ave. SW in North Delridge has been getting late mail for years! When I called the Westwood PO to complain, the supervisor told me that as long as they get it delivered there is no time line. I am glad to see something is being done. Many times, mail had been in the box overnight because it had not arrived by bed time. It also makes me concerned for the mail carriers who have to walk alone in the dark.

Sally September 18, 2014 (12:19 pm)

Yep, on Monday night after I went to bed, a package was delivered front and center on my porch, under my porch light for anyone walking down the street to see. It was safely there in the morning, but would of been better if they had tossed it to the side (I have a huge porch) so it could not be seen from the street. UPS always leaves the package off to the side. The next day, a girl from one block over brought over a package that had been left at her house for us. I am in zip 98146. My postal carriers (and there have been a few in the last couple of years are often talking on the phone when they drive by.

pupsarebest September 18, 2014 (12:22 pm)

If misery loves company, this is good to know.
Our mail service here on Gatewood Hill has been spotty, to say the least.
I don’t really care too much about when the mail arrives, but I DO want the weekly grocery ads, odd though that may seem to some.
Alas, sometimes we get them, sometimes we don’t.
Whatever is going on, I DO support the US Post Office, and wish them success as they face continual right-wing political onslaught bent on their destruction.

unknown September 18, 2014 (12:46 pm)

I’ve even seen mail carriers out on Sunday’s delivering in the surrounding neighborhood. :(

rocky raccoon September 18, 2014 (12:57 pm)

Why don’t they just deliver all of it directly to the recycling center, where it eventually ends up anyway?

HelperMonkey September 18, 2014 (1:02 pm)

ah yes, WWV post office, home base of my great mail carrier who thinks that yelling at and threatening people who dare to park on the street and purposefully running over my trash bin (yeah, the neighbor kid ratted you out!) is perfectly fine. Complaints have been made but the local USPS doesn’t really care. Mine has not been the only complaint about this carrier.

Marty2 September 18, 2014 (1:09 pm)

Thanks WSB – I was wondering why my daily publications have been arriving erratically lately.

iggy September 18, 2014 (1:13 pm)

At our condo we’ve also noted that the substitute letter carriers are downright sloppy about getting mail in the correct mailboxes. It’s a bit like musical chairs with residents having to re-deliver mail to the correct unit. Our regular letter carrier used to know our names; no longer like the old theme song from “Cheers.” I hope things get better. We’ve gotten no mail some days and then double mail, morning and late night, on other days.
Pupsarebest: You can have my grocery ads. We’ve been getting ads addressed to people all over West Seattle in our boxes to the point where some mailboxes are filled to overflowing with multiple ads.

andover September 18, 2014 (1:14 pm)

In the last two weeks our mail has been delivered mixed with mail from surrounding houses. Sorting is not what it used to be. Super lame.

WSince86 September 18, 2014 (1:20 pm)

Unknown- could be the new service USPS has added, Sunday delivery! Trying to keep up with the big guys?
Helper monkey- What a bummer of a story! Our mail carrier is the nicest guy! Friendly, cheerful and even tolerates my normally friendly dog’s near daily barking and snarling at the window ! Even told me ‘I like your dog!’ Another neighbor told me their carrier gives treats out to the dogs. We love our 98116 letter carriers!!!

Diane September 18, 2014 (1:24 pm)

agree, I also want the weekly grocery ads; just wish our postal carrier would stop cramming them into our tiny 1950’s mailboxes, which fills the box and tears up my “real” mail; I’ve begged my mail carrier for years to NOT put the ads inside our boxes; it would save them a ton of time to just lay the pile on our lobby table instead of the extra 5-10 mins to cram inside every single tiny box, that could help them with less time on their routes; any way to communicate that to their supervisor down in WV?
~
my mail carrier is very near retirement, so he doesn’t want to do anything to risk his job; he says carriers are required by law to cram that huge pile of ads inside our boxes; I hate it; I’ve thought many times of taking my destroyed “real” mail to the PO, but since it’s all the way down in WV and I’m in Admiral, it’s too much time/trouble; is there a # to call to talk to a real person who might be able to help with that? It would save my mail, and speed up their routes

Brian September 18, 2014 (1:27 pm)

Got a PO Box in 98116 precisely because I was tired of all this sort of substandard bulls**t in 98106/26. Some of them are as bad as the carriers in DC (google it) for the same reason: no accountability.

Has been great ever since (nearly 9 years ago).

iggy September 18, 2014 (1:34 pm)

Diane, you are correct that carriers are required by law to deliver ads—but only to the people to whom they are addressed. I’ve had my name removed from all the ad services (Red Plum, SmartSource, etc.) by calling the companies. However, the letter carriers now on our route don’t sort the ads by name–they just cram ads into every box (I would think there is eventually a shortage at the end of the route, since I know I’m not the only person to have deleted myself from the mailing list labels !!) and ignore the name/address on the label. This is illegal, but doesn’t seem to be a way to stop it. Our past regular carrier did know our names and did sort the mail, but those days seem to be over. Sigh.

JanS September 18, 2014 (1:37 pm)

did y’all read the article? Sunday deliveries are for Amazon deliveries !

West Seattle since 1979 September 18, 2014 (1:39 pm)

Thanks for checking into this, Tracy!

Alphonse September 18, 2014 (2:02 pm)

I wonder how it would affect the need for extra staffing if they didn’t have to deliver the unsolicited junk mail? I’ve taken myself off of the list of every coupon/grocery/catalog junk mail that I’ve received over the years, but the opt out either expires or, as someone mentioned above, they just stuff it in every box anyway. I do everything online so the only mail I get is junk, so I rarely check it. Then I get a nasty note stuck to my door from the mail carrier telling me to get the “mail” from my box.

heather September 18, 2014 (2:02 pm)

Wow! Who knew? I thought it was just my neighborhood. My mail had been delivered between 5-8pm for a few years – eventually I just got a PO Box.

margaritaville September 18, 2014 (2:36 pm)

Sure feel lucky – perhaps it’s time to pick six numbers on Saturday night. Our most excellent mail carrier has delivered mail consistently with no glitches on our Admiral area route.

Wes C. Addle September 18, 2014 (2:55 pm)

Lucky you @margaritaville
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Since I’ve moved to Admiral from Arbor Heights my mail delivery has been terrible. Once they wouldn’t deliver my mail because there was a different last name on the apartment mailbox sticker(that was rubbed off) Then a package kept trying to be delivered and they said they left call tags, but never received one and my limited item got sent back to the manufacturer and resold.

JoAnne September 18, 2014 (3:04 pm)

Do we need any more evidence that our infrastructure is already overburdened?
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So why are the mayor and city council still trying to stuff more people into West Seattle?

Robin September 18, 2014 (3:05 pm)

Short of suggesting combined group mail boxes to increase overall delivery efficiency and security, it is possible to purchase at McClendons a large, heavy duty, locking mailbox that will accept most sizes of mail, including most magazines and coupons. They are big enough for several days worth of mail, fairly water tight, and approved by WS PO (at least mine was prior to install). Just a comment covering several threads. Also. Why doesn’t the Cal. Ave PO take another zip? To small?

tanej September 18, 2014 (3:13 pm)

Our mail deliveries have been consistently later in the day for several months. However, the bigger issue is when important personalized mail is NOT delivered at all and the institution sending it to us has been told we don’t live at that address. Only 17+ years now. But maybe that explains why I’ve had to request delivery of some packages 2-3 times. Most of the time, I just feel sorry for the carriers whose days last so long. I, too, worry about them this winter when the weather gets wild.

Rachel September 18, 2014 (3:27 pm)

Late delivery? I wish. Many days I’m not getting any mail. I had a stretch of 3 in a row with a confirmed package delivery that never happened. I’m not buying the excuses.

anonyme September 18, 2014 (3:30 pm)

Iggy, I’m having the same problem and it’s very frustrating. It took me years to get off of all of the lists (ValuPak, Red Plum, etc.) but recently unaddressed versions have been crammed into my box. At the same time, I’m having important first class mail being returned as “undeliverable” – even though I have a corner address that is impossible to miss. Calling the P.O. is an exercise in futility. My regular carrier, Becky (who is AWESOME) must have been re-routed or on vacation.

WC September 18, 2014 (3:31 pm)

Quote “the national standard is that you’re supposed to get the mail by 5 pm, but lately, Doyle acknowledged” Unquote. I’ve never seen this standard in the M-41 or M-39!

Seattlite September 18, 2014 (3:50 pm)

I’ve noticed that mail carriers in the Seaview area are not wearing uniforms. This is a little annoying because it’s safer to know who is entering your yard and looking into your mailbox.

iggy September 18, 2014 (3:57 pm)

I was expecting an important, certified/registered letter a few weeks ago. I stayed home all afternoon. My name is clearly on the call box phone in the lobby and also on the mailbox, which includes my unit number. About 5:00 pm I went downstairs and found one of those “We tried to deliver, but no one was home” notices, which meant I had to wait until the next day and then go to the Westwood post office. I ran into the fellow who used to be our regular carrier. He said that in order to save time, many of the carriers now don’t even take registered/certified letters with them on their route and try to deliver and get a signature. They leave them at Westwood and put a yellow notice in your mailbox and you have to go to Westwood. The letter carrier said this is clearly against post office regulations; management at Westwood has told carriers they have to at least attempt delivery and that management does not want longer lines at Westwood because people have to come to pick up mail that should have been delivered on the route. Still, he said, the carriers are so frazzled that they don’t follow policy.

LStephens September 18, 2014 (4:10 pm)

We are having the same problems with late delivery in the Seaview area and now we have a carrier who left our mail on our front steps, where anyone walking by could have taken it, because our 15-pound cat hissed at her while laying in the sun at the open front door and then the mail carrier wanted to argue with me about it. Because the front door was open she could have very easily thrown the mail into the house. This week we had mail delivered for three different addresses other than ours. I can only wonder if others have received our mail. We had a great mail carrier, Rob, for many years but then the USPS in their infinite wisdom decides that since that route works so well, lets change it to 10 other carriers, some of which can’t deal with a laying down cat and can’t differentiate different names or addresses while delivering late into the evening.

Deb September 18, 2014 (4:29 pm)

I want to add a big THANK YOU to Seaview’s former mail carrier ROB. He is a terrific mail carrier, very friendly and so professional. It was obvious that he cared about his job. He “lost” the Seaview route in the “mail carrier seniority lottery”, and I believe he is now on a California Ave route. Rob’s replacement is friendly but I think that she is on vacation since Seaview’s service has been really dicey of late.
We miss you ROB.

Matt Taylor September 18, 2014 (4:32 pm)

Ditto to Diane’s comment.

What is one supposed to do when the postman crams the mail into the mailbox? I have dozens of camera phone pictures of crumpled mail over a couple of years where the mailers and junk mail are wedged into the box at the expense of actual correspondence. Anyone with half a brain can tell which pieces of mail are valuable and which should be treated with care, and which are junk mail and could be handled more roughly. The only explanation I can imagine is just carrier apathy and indifference. When I talk to neighbors they share stories of having packages thrown across the fence and hitting the door so it’s common to our carrier. I’m worried that if I file a complaint I’ll learn what “going postal” could actually mean. Suggestions? I’m in the Gatewood neighborhood.

PugetPride September 18, 2014 (4:41 pm)

@Rachel is right. Seattle mail service is some of the worst in the nation. Definitely a black eye for our community. I’ve had many business and personal packages arrive late (I mean weeks late) or never at all.

The kicker was that about 2 weeks after our last election, I received a ballot in the mail. I thought that was strange, but when I looked at it, it was from last year’s election! I kid you not, I never received a ballot for that election and it arrived almost a year later.

WSB September 18, 2014 (4:49 pm)

Regarding complaints … The nationwide hotline could probably tell you how to file one or reach a local manager. 800-ASK-USPS – I couldn’t bring up anything obvious via Google, which is my go-to for everything and usually delivers, so to speak. Our service has been reliable, though we don’t use it for much aside from an occasional parcel, and most days, as someone suggested upthread, it’s just junk mail that might as well be delivered to the recycling station rather than our door. Re: the non-uninformed personnel, I believe those would be the “carrier assistants” mentioned in the story – we have seen them too. – TR

unknown September 18, 2014 (4:42 pm)

WSince 86>>>you are correct I do recall reading something about that. :)

JanS!!!! thanks for being so polite in your comment!!!

sophista-tiki September 18, 2014 (4:44 pm)

“complain complain complain, thats all you mcnuggets ever do.” get a grip. Your mail isn’t being delivered at the exact same second every day?!OH the humanity! How about stop trying to undermine the USPS. This page has some PO facts for all of you PO haters. Just wait until you’re not getting any mail at all THEN you will have a legitimate complaint. https://www.facebook.com/saveourpostoffice?fref=ts

Buzz September 18, 2014 (4:45 pm)

Thank you Tracy for your reporting and for giving us citizens in West Seattle an opportunity to comment. The problems enumerated in your article and in many of the comments above have been going on for far too long. Each day’s mail should be delivered no later than 5 PM. To do that, the Seattle Post Office Administration needs to give their workers the resources in both funding and personnel to get this important job done properly.

b September 18, 2014 (5:00 pm)

Haha Mrs. Doyle! Maybe if you were talking about a station you actually work at your lies would be more believable. Why are you speaking about a station in which you aren’t a supervisor at? On any given day there are 10+ supervisors roaming around at the Westwood Station so why couldn’t one of those fine people explain what is going on at their own station? Because postal management refuses to be held accountable for their mistakes. The truth about your late mail delivery has nothing to do with West Seattle growing and the need to create more routes. The truth is that back in February, management had the brilliant idea to eliminate 9 routes at Westwood with the rest of the routes absorbing the deliveries of those 9 routes. As a result, carriers who were on routes for years got yanked from those routes and put in new neighborhoods to learn new routes with hundreds of more deliveries. To top it off, they had to learn these new routes in the middle of the winter in horrible weather and in the dark. Carriers were working 10+ hour days with management adding insult to injury by harassing the carriers and asking them why their new routes were taking them so long to do. Maybe walking 10 miles a day with hundreds of more deliveries and a big increase in parcel volume were why the carriers took longer but nonetheless management kept harassing carriers and telling them they were doing a bad job. Finally a couple of months ago after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime, management realized the routes were too long and created 8 new routes at Westwood. This relieved most of the burden on the routes but now everyone is learning new routes again and the overtime is piling up. Management decided that the carriers were messing things up since they weren’t making their numbers so their answer was to bring in the big boys and bring in district and Western area managers to the station to straighten all the carriers up. Truth is, when all these big boys who probably make 100k a year come together things actually get worse. People who couldn’t make it as a carrier got promoted to supervisor and before you know it they are telling the carriers how to do their jobs. That in a nutshell is why your mail delivery is messed up and that is the answer Mrs. Doyle didn’t want to give you. Service is the last word in the Postal Service and it is also the last thing management cares about. They are too busy looking at a computer screen worrying about how to make their numbers look good than to give a crap about your service. They would much rather a carrier run and make 8 hours and misdeliver multiple times per block then to have a carrier do their job thoroughly and accurately and have to pay that carrier a half hour of overtime. Mrs. Doyle can you answer this question for me? Processing and delivering mail is a relatively straight forward process so why is there 1 supervisor per every 7 employees at the Postal Service?

trickycoolj September 18, 2014 (5:27 pm)

One caveat to all of this that I overheard from the supervisor last time I was at WV Station is that if you have a mailbox at one of those mailbox businesses (not one at the Post Office) and the carrier arrives after business hours, you’re hosed. They will not deliver your mail that day. There was a man at the post office trying to get a week’s worth of mail including checks because they were getting to the business with his mailbox after COB. They just take all of it out the next day so you can’t even really try to pick it up with out putting in a hold mail at the post office request.
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On another note, one wonders why they implemented all this during the summer months when they stated there’s a 20% vacation rate.

JumboJim September 18, 2014 (6:02 pm)

1st world problems….

FH September 18, 2014 (7:27 pm)

Thanks for the report. We thought it was because our carrier of many, many years (in 98136) retired and the replacement had not yet gotten the hang of it and the hills were too difficult for her. As someone else mentioned, there are some days that we have not gotten any mail, which is a bit disconcerting.
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Love the comment by rocky raccoon – we just sort ours by the recycle bin before bringing it inside.
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I hope this problem is resolved quickly because it is rapidly becoming dark earlier – I fear for the safety of the carriers (and the mail they are carrying).
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One more thing, also previously mentioned – what can I do to get the parcels placed out of view of the street? Just a little to the side of the door would do so it cannot be seen from the street – I HAVE had packages stolen from my porch!

flimflam September 18, 2014 (8:09 pm)

not trying to pile on, but the massive % of absolute junk that arrives via the post office should be a serious sore thumb. I know its not a local decision, but the sheer volume of junk mail is insane! we are paying a small army of public employees to bring us ads from pizza hut?

Lolapop September 18, 2014 (8:25 pm)

Our mail seems to be on time still but I often get my neighbors mail.
I have also noticed that the mailmen/women have stopped tucking their shirts in or ironing the uniforms. It’s not a huge deal but it looks sloppy and makes me think that the USPS has stopped caring.

Dereck September 18, 2014 (10:13 pm)

WSB I have filed complaints against them so has many other people where I live. Some people have not gotten mail an over a month. For me I been getting from everyone where I live meaning out of about 50 Apts I’ve been getting it like from 95% of Apts. It’s like they just dumping mail off. Also I’ve been getting mail from someone who has lived here years ago, even after they put it in system for years.
Please help us all.
Oh is there a way you can get us the rules of what a postal carrier is to do on the job. I can’t ffind it and when I call about that I just get the run around. One person says this then an other person says different on 5he same subject.
Again thanks
Thanks West Seattle Blog.

Me September 19, 2014 (12:33 am)

*I currently get my mail around 10am-yay!
*Over the last few weeks sometimes I won’t get mail for 3 days in a row-uh, that doesn’t seem right?
*this past summer, I took a vacation and requested a mail hold 3 weeks in advance, we were not able to leave on Saturday as planned and I still got mail. I called the 800-USPS to file a complaint and make sure my mail was going to be held. I came home the following Saturday night to a week’s worth of mail stuffed into my tiny 50s style mailbox, I wasn’t supposed to get my held mail until Monday-uh, did somebody not get the memo?
*I have a PO box and was wondering about that odd Sunday delivery attempt!

I have been looking at large locking mailboxes, but really can’t pony up the $300 for one at the moment. We do have a mail slot in the door, but we were constantly receiving religious material delivered thru the slot, and that’s a little too invasive for me, so that’s now taped shut.

At least some things now make a bit more sense.

SadPuppy September 19, 2014 (7:08 am)

Anyone know how to find out the name of a former carrier in our Sunrise Heights neighborhood? He was awesome and our dog’s daytime best friend. My dog is seriously sad since the switch. We’d like to send a thank your for years of great service and being such a great friend to our pup. Any ideas on how I can go about doing this?

On another note, we used the iPhone app called PaperKarma to get out junk mail under control. Snap a photo of your mail and they’ll get you off the list. No more credit card offers for us!!

Brian September 19, 2014 (7:16 am)

It’s a telling sign regarding the demographics of readership on this site when a story about the USPS gets 44 comments worth of discussion.

JoB September 19, 2014 (8:22 am)

welcome to the mail service the rest of the world already enjoys :(
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want to make a difference? insist your elected representatives take the vastly overfunded pension monkey off the post office’s back so they can hire more carriers

NoJunk September 19, 2014 (11:16 am)

http://seattle.gov/StopJunkMail/
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I just registered and requested to be removed from the junkiest junk mail of all: The Seattle Times Savings Source. It may take up to 90 days to be removed … looking forward to that day.

westsidemegan September 19, 2014 (11:23 am)

This is not just a West Seattle issue. Although I live in the Riverview neighborhood and have noticed the mail being delivered way later than normal. Annoying? Yes. Concerning? Yes. I also work in South Park where mail delivery issues are becoming a sore issue. I have worked for this company for nearly 8 years and up until a few months ago, our paychecks that are delivered via mail have always arrived on time, without incident. In the last 3 months, every pay period our checks are arriving 2 days later than normal. This is beyond irritating! Our checks should have arrived this week on Wednesday so we could have them ready for the employees this morning. They still haven’t arrived and we didn’t get any mail delivery yesterday which is odd considering as a business, we get mail every day. Now, again, I will have to come down after hours on a Friday to take care of payroll and then deliver paychecks to my employees (thankfully there are only 3 of them!!). I think this issue is much bigger than just West Seattle….Sophista-tiki, if the post office was consistent in delivering mail as they are suppose to do (that is their job!!), we wouldn’t be so upset. If I could pay my employees on-time, as has been for so many years, the rest of us wouldn’t have to clean up the post office mess! Now I have to go out of my way to get the job done because someone else can’t do theirs!…I appreciate what the mail carriers do, but when they are not doing it correctly it is hard to appreciate it at all. There have been wonderful and kind carriers, but as of lately its just a hot mess and I certainly hope they get back on track!

BlairJ September 19, 2014 (11:32 am)

Every once in a while, when I happen to be in the front yard or near the front door when the mail is delivered, I like to shout out “Thank You!” to the mail carrier. I have no way of knowing at that point whether anything has been mis-delivered, but I figure they could use a little morale boost every now and then.

a September 19, 2014 (1:33 pm)

Sad puppy- His name is Marty. Everyone and their dogs love him. He’s a really good guy

dcn September 19, 2014 (1:38 pm)

The issues here are not just West Seattle-based. My mail service here is much better than when I lived in North Seattle, and the Wallingford Station was the distribution center. For 7 years, in my Wallingford apartment, I continually had random mail returned as “not at this address.” This included important business letters as well as things like Christmas cards. It was infrequent, but enough to be a problem at times when my employer or friends would call to ask me why I hadn’t told them I’d moved, or bills weren’t paid because I never received them.

When I moved to Greenwood, I once didn’t get mail for over 3 weeks. When I complained about the lack of mail after a week of nothing, I was told that they had budget and staffing cuts, so some routes had been changed. It’s understandable that the quality of service might go down, but to not get mail at all was a real problem, and the manager at the post office didn’t seem to be concerned about that.

I suggested to them that my mail was probably delivered to the wrong box, since I lived on one of those streets that had one huge locked box for all the households on the street. I asked them to please check for my mail in that large box. Nothing. Finally, 2 weeks later, a new mail carrier took over my route, and I received all my missing mail. He wrote an apology letter, saying it had been mis-delivered to a box for an unoccupied household in that large box for the whole street. Exactly what I had thought, only it took a new mail carrier who cared about the importance of the job they do, to actually correct the mistake.

So far, I have never had a problem in West Seattle. And I love my mail slot in my door, since I don’t have to worry about mail theft. I will say that when morale is low in an institution, it is hard to get high quality work out of your employees. Over-work and underfunding are a very bad recipe for worker satisfaction. Threatening to cut employee pensions (as someone here suggested) only reduces morale further.

a September 19, 2014 (1:51 pm)

Sad puppy- you can write him a thank you card and simply hand it to a mail carrier you see in your neighborhood. Tell them it’s for Marty and ask if they can bring it to the station and give it to him. He still works in the neighborhood so maybe he’ll stop by and say hello to your pup

V September 19, 2014 (3:24 pm)

Thanks for the info WSB! I have been having loads of issues with usps. Late delivery/No delivery/double delivery/I get the neighbors mail/they get mine and for at least the last year I swear there is a different carrier every day. Lately they have been plain clothes, so glad to find out what that’s about. Our latest issue is that mail for a variety of my neighbors is getting delivered to the vacant house next to me, and not just junk but important stuff. The other day I got to run around delivering all my neighbors mail that had been left in that box. I hope they get their issues figured out soon. The problem is that if they are completely unreliable, unprofessional and impossible to communicate with, people are going to be less concerned with saving them.

lynn September 19, 2014 (4:36 pm)

I asked my mail be stopped for two weeks this summer …got a confirmation on line to this effect.

Upon returning home from vacation found mail box stuffed with mail some hanging out of the mailbox …and the note to hold the mail in the middle of it.?? Called the post office was told guy new..no training ….sorry….

tracey September 22, 2014 (4:44 pm)

Ditto on the sad puppy comment. Marty is like no other. You can catch him on Elmgrove and Kenyon to say HI. He is like a mail man from the 50s. A real quality guy who enjoys his job and his customers…even the 4 legged kind.

The Mailman, Me September 24, 2014 (11:41 am)

In Venice, CA we routinely deliver up until 8pm. Last year we were often delivering until Midnight!!! A couple times we were out past 1am…..crazy.

David Pelton October 6, 2014 (11:58 am)

As a retired letter carrier, I agree with the comment that the employees need to be given the time and resources to complete their job. Don’t shoot the messenger. I, too, am experiencing poor service. Today I sent a letter to: Consumer Affairs, USPS, 34301 9th Ave S. #304, Federal Way, WA 98003.

Sorry, comment time is over.