Sometimes you just can’t win. The U.S. Postal Service tacitly admitted last month that Standard A advertising mail is not being properly delivered to apartment houses. But instead of being cheered for its honesty, the USPS was jeered – by its own work force.
Coverage of the admission by DIRECT Newsline (www.direct newsline.com) drew a rash of e-mail from angry letter carriers.
USPS officials, writing in the Oct. 7 edition of the Postal Bulletin, cited complaints about advertising mail “being left in apartment [house] vestibules rather than [being] delivered into mailboxes,” and urged carriers to deliver the mail properly.
Oversized mail can be left in receptacles in “a designated location that affords adequate protection for the mail with the permission of the addressee,” the USPS argued. Mail must not be “undelivered on racks, tables, shelves or other fixtures.”
The statement enraged the letter carriers, most of whom did not give their names. One writer claimed that postal officials were “out of touch with reality,” and wondered how many of them “actually delivered mail to an apartment mailbox, or delivered mail at all.”
Another carrier said the directive was “insulting, inaccurate and politically motivated,” and described letter carriers as “dedicated, devoted and professional.”
“To pander to you people, they in turn trash us, which in a contract negotiation is very political,” the carrier continued.
Several other carriers called for new and larger apartment house mailboxes. And one accused postal officials of giving “contradictory” instructions about the placement of oversized mail. “In many cases the designated location is the floor,” the carrier wrote.
Didn’t anyone like the USPS statement? Yes: direct marketing trade groups.
Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers executive director Neal Denton saw the USPS statement as “a reminder to postal workers that they have to deliver mail correctly if the USPS is to maintain its monopoly on addressed mail.”
The Direct Marketing Association “is pleased that the postal service is trying to make an effort to have Standard A mail put inside the appropriate mailbox,” said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president for government affairs. He couldn’t recall the last time postal officials made such an admission, “no matter how indirectly, regarding the delivery of advertising mail.”
The USPS statement appeared just days after Postmaster General William Henderson reported that 94 percent of all first class mail was delivered on time – within two days of entering the mail stream. That’s a 1% increase over last year.
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