Reported Postal Service Problems Would Be Examined Under McCaskill-Heitkamp Request

Senators: Reported postal service improvements ‘often do not align with feedback from our constituents’

WASHINGTON – Having received a wide array of delayed mail stories leading to concerns about the accuracy of delivery data from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota called for answers on what USPS is doing to improve mail delivery throughout the country, especially in rural communities, and ensure that their delivery data accurately reflects customers’ experiences. 

“Missourians need to know that they can count on the post office to deliver everything from lifesaving prescription drugs to wedding invitations to essential business supplies,” said McCaskill, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Right now, too many customers are reporting unreasonable delays, with mail taking as much as a week longer than it’s supposed to. If the postal service is saying they’re meeting their delivery standards by playing games with the data, that’s unacceptable.”

“One of the top concerns I hear about across North Dakota is delayed and unreliable mail delivery from the U.S. Postal Service. Particularly in rural communities, North Dakotans depend on the Postal Service to connect with their loved ones, get medication delivered, and keep their businesses running,” said Heitkamp. “North Dakotans deserve a consistent level of delivery from the mail service they rely on every day, which is why we’re looking to identify weak spots in the mail system to help strengthen service over the long run. My Fix My Mail initiative has brought many of these chronic mail service problems to light by empowering North Dakotans to tell me about the mail service challenges they face. It has led to some improvements, but clearly, more still needs to be done.”

Senators McCaskill and Heitkamp are requesting a report from the Government Accountability Office that will investigate how USPS holds its employees accountable for accurately scanning the mail at appropriate points in the delivery system and if there’s informal or formal practices resulting in misconduct. Their letter to Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro points to examples of recent complaints against USPS such as marking mail as delivered even when it remains undelivered or delaying postmark dates so that it seems that mail is being delivered in a shorter timeframe. “While USPS faced difficulty in the past few years meeting its service standards, it began to see service improvements in 2016,” the Senators wrote. “We would ordinarily be heartened to see improvements in service, but these reported improvements often do not align with feedback from our constituents or the reported confusion about how long it takes to send mail from point A to point B….As Senators from states with large rural populations, we understand that for many of our constituents USPS represents one of few mailing options, if not the only option.”

Read the letter from Senators McCaskill and Heitkamp HERE.

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