Where is my mail in the Five Towns

With much less people purchasing merchandise in the brick and mortar stores as online shopping rises in popularity, more people are relying on delivery services and the United States Postal Service to deliver ordered items, especially during the holiday season.

A few members of the Forever Inwood Facebook page posted their complaints and responses on mail delivery over the weekend of Dec. 8-9.

“How is your US Mail delivery,” Denise Carroll wrote. “I live on Redwood Avenue, one block from the Inwood post office; yesterday my mail was delivered at 7:45 p.m. The poor letter carrier was using a flashlight to put the mail in the proper mailboxes. Anybody else receiving their mail later and later each day? This started back in October, first it was 4 p.m., then 5 p.m., then 6:30 p.m., now 7:45. What’s going on?”

“This has been an ongoing problem,” Gayle Magliaro Saldutti responded. “I’m on Davis Avenue and we got ours at 6:50. You can die on hold trying to put in complaint on the 800 [phone] number. Forget trying to talk to postmaster here!”

Maureen Marion, the spokeswoman for the postal service’s Long Island region, said that the increase in packages the USPS has to process and deliver are the major cause of delays around this time of year. “This holiday season we’re seeing an increase in package in package volume of about 15 to 20 percent more than this time last year,” she explained. “We were originally predicting that more than 900 million packages would be delivered nation wide between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’re currently ahead of that pace.”

Marion said that package delivery adds more time to a carrier’s route compared to just doing regular mail delivery. Packages must be placed in a safe place by a house. Mail is dropped in a mailbox that more than likely is closer to the roadway.

“If we say each time it adds three more minutes to the route and each carrier has 20 packages, although it’s likely more,” she said. “Then that’s an extra hour right there … It’s not a handful of letters, it’s an armful of boxes. Then you have to factor in weather or getting stuck behind a school bus, all these factors contribute.”

Vacation plays a role as well, Marion added. “Even though you’re not going to see a lot of carriers going to the Bahamas this time of year,” she said, “if a carrier is out for whatever reason their route will be split up between several other carriers. The same solution is used on carriers’ days off, as USPS delivers six days a week –– although they will do additional package deliveries on Sundays this time of year –– and a carrier’s workweek is five days long.”

Carroll posted that she spoken with someone at the Lawrence Post Office, who presented a similar image to Marion’s of the increase of package volume during the holiday season. “Please be kind to your letter carries, it’s not their fault; they are covering more than one area, and are doing the best they can,” Carroll wrote on the internet site.

Marion said she is thankful for that thinking. “We appreciate everyone’s patience,” she said. “We know it’s an important time of year and everyone is eager to get what they’re waiting for.”