The latest pandemic-related crisis: mail delays.
People everywhere are complaining of late letters and missing packages. Gary Favors has been checking the Post Office every day near his home in St. Bernard, Ohio.
He's waiting on a package that's been delayed more than a week. And it is not his first package to be held up in recent weeks.
"It's been a spiral effect of missing packages and medication," he said. "I don't know what to do."
Favors depends on the mailman to deliver his prescriptions from the VA, but his medicine is now often late. When he tracked one of his packages, he found it was stuck in a local Cincinnati sorting facility.
"They looked it up and said it's here somewhere, but they don't know what to do," Favors said.
Another St. Bernard Post Office customer, Andrea Carter, is also noticing slower deliveries in recent weeks.
"Usually if someone in the same city mailed you something, you would get it the next day or the day after," Carter said. "Now it can take a whole week, so it's like mailing it to someplace in a different state."
Not just a local problem
Favors started talking to friends and neighbors, and he soon realized a lot of them have been having mail delivery issues, too.Then he discovered it's become a nationwide problem.
Congress is calling for an investigation into issues that followed the appointment of a new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, this year.
The Washington Post says to cope with a $2 billion deficit this year, the Postal Service:
- Instituted a hiring freeze
- Cut overtime
- Ordered sorting machines to close down at the end of the work day, even if they were still filled with unsorted mail.
In addition, some reports said many carriers are out on COVID-19 quarantine, short-staffing Post Offices even more.
What it appears to mean is longer delivery times and growing frustration for people like Favors and Carter.
"It seems to be a big mess," Favors said.
WCPO has shared Favors' case with the Post Office. They have not responded yet.
As long as the service is short-staffed, though, don't be surprised if some of your mail is late, too.
As always, don't waste your money.
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