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Stories from the NFCCA Newsletter, the “Northwood News” |
Did you ever wonder why you frequently get your neighbor’s mail? Or why you oftentimes get mail for someone on a different street but who has the same house number as yours? Chances are, if this happens to you on a regular basis, it’s the result of management decisions by the United States Postal Service.
Ever since our carrier had his route changed in 2016, we (and many of our neighbors on Edgewood Avenue) have almost daily experiences with misdelivered mail, including our own being delivered elsewhere and then either brought to our house by a neighbor or re-sent via the postal service.
When I asked neighbors via the NFCCA listerv if our mail delivery problems were unique or widespread, I got more than a dozen private responses about missing packages and misdelivered mail. I also received descriptions of packages haphazardly thrown onto porches.
This isn’t simply an inconvenience. In some cases, folks have had checks delivered to incorrect addresses that were then forwarded to the correct recipient. One person wrote that she received a neighbor’s tax documents. That means expected payments are not received on time and sensitive personal information (including financial records and social security numbers) are being handed to strangers.
If you go to the Four Corners Post Office on University Boulevard, they’ll direct you to a bulletin board in the lobby where the numbers are posted to reach the station where our neighborhood’s deliveries originate.
I called the numbers and eventually spoke with Daljeet Kumar, the delivery supervisor for ZIP Code 20901. I explained some of the issues we’ve been having with our mail delivery and he attributed it to a lack of permanently assigned carriers to particular routes.
“I think this is an auxiliary route and we don’t have a permanent carrier on this route,” he told me. “I’ll talk to the carrier because I’m going to put a permanent carrier on this route so that there’s no more misdeliveries. If it doesn’t improve, please call me back and let me know.”
Kumar, who goes by DK, explained that auxiliary routes are not full routes and that they are served by several rotating carriers daily.
After I gave DK my address, he assured me that a permanent carrier would be assigned and that the other carriers in the neighborhood would be counseled about correctly delivering the mail. Since that call, we haven’t gotten anyone else’s mail.
If you are continuing to experience mail delivery problems, contact DK directly at 301.586.7615. ■
© 2017 NFCCA [Source: https://nfcca.org/news/nn201704h.html]