Congressman Henry A. Waxman
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048
 

Dear Congressman Waxman,

Since October, mail to my Santa Monica address has been repeatedly returned to sender. This has caused me grave difficulties, cancelled credit cards, etc. I have repeatedly complained to the Post Office. They refused to take my complaints seriously ("you're probably getting no mail because no one is sending you anything") until I could bring in copies of returned mail. Several times I presented copies of returned mail to supervisors in my postal station, and each time they promised that it would not happen again. After each in-person talk with a supervisor making photocopies of my returned mail, my mail delivery resumed for a brief period of time, then stopped again. Below is a chronology of events beginning October 2000:

• 2^nd week of October--mail stopped being delivered to my apartment, despite the fact that my name is on the mailbox
• throughout October I made several complaints to the Post Office's (800) number. First I was told "you may not be receiving mail because no one is writing you" or "mail delivery may have backed up; wait a week or 2". Even after I reported to the (800) number that I had received phone calls from my creditors stating that mail addressed to me had been returned to them, the Post Office wanted to see the return envelopes (very difficult to do because banks and credit cards companies generally do not keep the envelopes on returned mail, and even when they do, they couldn't send them back to my Santa Monica address without fear that they would be returned again).
• Oct 27^th--I filed a formal complaint with the (800) number (case CO4520778) and was told to call back several days later to see the status of my complaint
• Oct 31^st--I called and was told that the supervisor had informed the carrier about the problem on Oct 28^th, yet I was still not receiving mail
• Nov 6^th--I visited the Santa Monica postal station and talked with a female supervisor who told me that it should now be resolved. Then for several weeks I intermittently received mail, but most of this was marked with stickers indicating that it should be returned to sender because I no longer lived at the address and had no forwarding order on file (despite the fact that my name had been on the mailbox for approximately 6 months).
• Nov 22^nd--I filed a written complaint using the post office's "Consumer Service Card" (copy attached). No one has ever tried to contact me about this (unless perhaps they sent me mail that was returned to them).
• Nov 27^th--I again visited my postal station and talked with Supervisor Myron Kudanovych who made photocopies of about 10 returned-mail envelopes and said that he would investigate what happened and correct the problem.
• Nov 28^th--Postal supervisor Kudanovych called and told me that they "don't really know how this happened", "there's always human error", and "there's no guarantee that this won't happen again". He apologized for their mistakes, and agreed to write me a letter that I could try to use with creditors to get fees removed, restore my credit rating, etc.
• Nov 29^th--Postal supervisor Kudanovych gave me a handful of copies of the apology letter (attatched). I told him that I would be in Northern California for a month in December and asked him how it would be best to deal with my mail while I was gone. He told me that I should not attempt to use the Post Office's temporary forward service for fear that it might initiate a new round of letters returned to sender. He assured me that if I had the mail held at the post office for a month, there was absolutely no way that any of it would be returned to sender. Despite the fact that this would mean missing various bills, I submitted a form asking the post office to hold my mail at the station from Dec 6-Jan 8.
• I received mail until I left town on Dec 6. Mail then was held for me.
• Dec 18^th--I had a brief meeting in Los Angeles and dropped by my post office. I asked whether picking up mail held for me thusfar would cause any misdirection problems for mail that would arrive over the next few weeks and should be held until Jan 8. After being told that there was no problem picking up mail in the middle of a "hold at post office" period, I picked up 50+ pieces of mail.
• Jan 8^th--I returned to town and came in to pick up my previous 3 weeks of mail that should have been held at the post office. A clerk named Michael looked for my held mail for half an hour and couldn't find any. He finally told me that, since my hold had just expired, my carrier must have taken the mail to deliver to my apartment, and that I would probably find it at home that evening. There was no mail at my home that evening.
• Jan 9^th--I went in to the post office and spoke with Larry Young, the station manager. He found 2 pieces of mail that had been held for me over the past few weeks. (Clearly, there should have been much much more than that, and the rest was undoubtedly returned to sender.) He could not explain why, on the previous day, the clerk had been unable to locate even those 2 pieces after half an hour of searching. I explained to him my ongoing problems, and he said that he was surprised that no one had made him aware of these. He made photocopies of some of my returned-mail envelopes, apologized to me, and promised to investigate. He took down my phone number and promised to call me in a day or 2. (He didn't.)
• Jan 18^th--I called station manager Young, and at first he had trouble remembering my case ("we get so many cases here, it's hard to remember which one you are"). Finally, he seemed to recall. I angrily asked him why no one had called me like he had promised, and he responded that he had returned my case to a supervisor (presumably Kudanovych) to handle. He promised to call me the next day (today), but it is the end of the day and he hasn't called.

I find the actions of the post office outrageous by any standard. Not only are they returning my mail to sender, but they repeatedly making promises that they do not keep (that it won't happen again, that they'll call me to follow up, etc.).

This has been extremely troubling for me. Not only have I experienced financial hardships (credit cards cancelled, checks bouncing, large fees for missed dates), but this has been devastating personally. There's no way to explain how horrible it is to have your mail sent back to sender, particularly when you don't even have a complete list of who has been writing. And though now I have been getting mail delivered for an entire week (except for yesterday), I have no confidence that this will continue because the post office has repeatedly promised that they had taken care of the problem, but then several weeks later my mail resumed being returned to sender. In fact, I think that since October, there have been many more days when my mail was marked 'return to sender' than days when my mail was actually delivered.

There are also larger problems here. If this is happening to me, it is probably happening to many other people (witness the station manager having so many complaint cases that it took him some time to recognize who I was, even though I had talked to him at length 9 days before). In addition, everyone I've talked to at the post office (the 800 number, other branches, carriers) has said that I should never submit a temporary forward form because temporary forwards so frequently cause mail to be returned to sender. (If the post office can't get temporary forwards right, why don't they just stop offering this service?)

So could you please look into this matter? For contacting me, it might be better to use my office address (where my mail delivery is much more reliable) rather than my home address, but I am including both. Thank you very much for your attention to this matter.
 
 

Sincerely,
 

Howard Besser