Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Infamous 60640 Post Office Still Not Doing Its Job Very Well

There's some discontent brewing over on UU's Facebook page.

A reader named Kate wrote in to detail the serious delivery problems she's been having and the serious attitude problems she experienced when she went to the 60640 post office to tell the manager about it.

"I have not received mail from the Uptown P.O. since April 9th. Items that I haven't received so far have been a check, 7 Netflix DVDs (I had asked for replacements after not receiving them), a magazine sub, dental health insurance cards, and other pieces of mail. I went to the P.O. on Saturday, waited for 25 minutes and then told to wait in another line to talk to the Supervisor who treated me like I was an idiot and, said our carrier for the route I'm on just stopped coming in two weeks ago, and even though they have substitutes, 'there is nothing they can do once they give these carriers the mail.' He says once the mail gone from the post office. it's in their hands. 

I asked if I could fill out a complaint form and he gave me something generic and then blew me off, saying other people were waiting. Today I called the Inspector General's office while at work and they told me to call the Consumer Affairs division which I will now do during my lunchtime tomorrow. I believe my belongings have been stolen and I am filing a theft report AGAINST this local post office for stealing my mail. I'm so upset I'm ready to scream. Is anyone else having this problem? My whole building is going through this, not just me."

Unsurprisingly, many readers chimed in with their own tales of woe about the post office, including stories of mail and packages found dumped in the snowbanks; standing outside their home and seeing the package notification change from "undelivered" to "delivered" even though they never received anything; receiving greeting cards that had been opened, presumably to see if any money had been enclosed; multiple stories of packages that were never received; and postal carriers who just stopped delivering the mail, for a myriad of reasons/excuses.

Other readers gave advice, the most common being to contact Rep. Jan Schakowsky's office, since the U.S. House of Representatives has authority over the USPS.  Then investigative reporter Pam Zekman's producer asked the complainants to contact him to see if CBS can do a story about it.

Will things at the notorious post office change?  It was a long-time item on the agenda of former alderman Mary Ann Smith to see the longstanding "culture of incompetence" (check out this article dating from 1992!) at 60640 get remedied. Stay tuned, we'll stay on top of this and hope for some better results.

10 comments:

  1. Good idea to the get the local news on the case. Call all the stations. If not them, someone should use their cell phone to record their next interaction with the USPS staff.

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  2. Exact same thing happened to me once for a couple months while I resided within the 60640 zip code! My mail mysteriously stopped arriving one day. I don't know exactly when because I don't honestly receive tons of mail, but I also had a netflix disk plan at the time and they would resend my disks and they'd never arrive. Same with magazines I had at the time. I changed everything to my work address and complained to the 60640 post office. I received the EXACT same treatment! They treated me like an imposition and acted like they could absolutely care less. They gave me the run around and kept telling me to call back for the post master who was never there. Finally I got fed up and opened a ticket with the USPS by calling the 800 number on their site. I honestly forget how long it took or what all I had to do but I remember one day out of the blue I received a stack of rubber banded mail that was almost everything I had been missing for over 2 months.

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  3. I don't have any problems with my mail but that post office seriously sucks.

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  4. Deja Vu all over again:
    Here are my USPO contacts from my private vault of problem solvers accumulated through many many years of putting up with this ridiculousness in Uptown. My mail was found in a bonfire some idiot postal worker started in his back yard to empty out his car trunkful of undelivered mail.

    Below are the names of people we used several years ago. I am sure the key people in these jobs have moved on but their jobs functions and positions remain downtown. Once we got in contact directly with them, secret in-house investigations were undertaken heads started to roll.

    Consumer Affairs, Carmen Santiago Manager, 433 West Harrison St., 2nd floor, Chicago, Il 60699-9631

    Tom Brady, US Postal Inspector In Charge (Chgo)
    Toll Free: 877-876-2455 (just dialed it. this number still works)
    Web: usps.com/postalinspectors

    I'm not certain that Tom Brady is still Chicago's inspector but he was great once he got on the case.

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  5. The entire USPS has a "culture of incompetence" and it sucks across Chicago. The Chicago USPS has been notorious for decades for extremely poor service.

    I live in 60645, and work in 60616. I frequently receive mail addressed to homes many blocks away, and packages that are supposed to be signed for are routinely left in our vestibule, where they can be stolen. At the office, we often do not receive a delivery for days, just to receive a 3 or 4 day backlog on day 3 or 4, along with mail addressed to other people on other streets.

    Is it time to fade the USPS and let private industry fill the gap? Methinks that the function could easily be handled, for less money and with more efficiency, by an entrepreneurial concern. Unfortunately, though, the U.S. Constitution protects the USPS, defining the post as a function of the government.

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  6. Any envelope that looks like it might contain a check is usually torn open in the corner. I even kept one that had a check for $0.51 inside. It was opened and, for some reason, someone wrote the name of the check issuer on the back side of the envelope. Another time, our building stopped receiving mail for about one week when our regular postman (who is wonderful) went on vacation. I tracked down our mail to the Uptown post office, where it was being stored because the temp postal worker didn't feel like delivering it, I guess. Although no adequate rationale was given or apology made, a supervisor personally delivered the backlog of mail to our building.

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  7. I used to live in the 60640 zip code a few years back. I sold an expensive telephoto lens to an international buyer via eBay. Unfortunately the buyer opted not to purchase shipping insurance. Needless to say the lens mysteriously disappeared. Numerous calls to the Uptown PO yielded in zero results. I now live in Downtown and was having major issues with one of the USPS driver parking his truck below my unit to visit the 7-11 in by building. He would leave his diesel engine running, spewing fumes in my window. Numerous calls to the local main PO yielded zero results. Every time I'd call, I was told that the situation was fixed. Finally I called the 800 number and was told to write to consumer affairs. I sent a letter along with a log of date/times and truck # of the offending driver. Within a week or so, the problem stopped and I haven't had a problem since. Send a letter along with the dates/time of who you spoke to. Hopefully they will help you get to the bottom of the issue.

    USPS office of the VP of Consumer & Industrial Affairs
    475 L’enfant Plaza South West #4115
    Washington, DC 20260-2200

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  8. I had some problems with 60640 and wrote the Postmaster General in Washington DC and the Consumer Affairs in Chicago. I get letters from the PG that they are investigating the complaints. Try going to the Post office and they don't have stamps! And the APC machine is not working so you can get stamps. I now get my stamps from the Lincoln Park satellite office on Broadway or go downtown. I try to avoid 60640.
    The problem is the transition to the new Postmaster general and the transition to "privatize" the post office -- make it act like a private company like UPS. They are shutting facilities - to the complaints of Congress. Mail is slower and workers have low morale. They just don't care. They might as close 60640.

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  9. I have had tons of problems with 60640 and somehow found emails for people in DC who work at the national level for the USPS. They got the proper people on the case and the problem with delivery was rectified. Not surprisingly though, it's happening again. I emailed Loretta Wilkins who works in the Chicago District office and cc'd Kelly Sigmon who is the VP of Customer Experience about this experience, which includes missing mail, mis-delivered mail, and failure of the carrier to lock the bank of mailboxes when they were finished.

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  10. i wish mr. mohammed was there (supervisor 60640).....

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