Postal issues snagging timely arrival of mail, packages

A resident who purchased a laptop online on Best Buy is out $550 due to continued U.S. Postal Services issues that have plagued CNMI residents.

Claude Gordon, who works on the Navy ships that can be seen on the waters from Beach Road, told Saipan Tribune yesterday that the whereabouts of the $500 HP laptop he purchased in May continues to remain unknown.

“I ordered a package and had it sent to a friend in Guam via air freight because Best Buy doesn’t ship to Saipan. It took two months to arrive and once I found out the package was there from the tracking number, I authorized my friend to pick up the package but all the post office said was ‘no card, no package,’” he said.

He said the office in question is located near the Guam Premier Outlets in Tamuning.

When he inquired again because the package arrived according to the tracking number, he was told that the package was returned to the sender because its address was undeliverable.

He called the postmaster, who was very difficult to get a hold of, and was told that his item was sent back to the sender because the address on the package was deemed undeliverable even though it had arrived at the correct post office.

Gordon then called Best Buy over 20 times inquiring whether the package had been returned and he was told that there was no record of return. To date, nothing has been done by either company to address the problem, he said.

“USPS is giving me the run around and now I’m out $550,” he said.

Specific to the Guam postal service, postal officials stated last year that Guam residents were told to revise their mailing addresses to match the ones given via notification letters to match addresses in the USPS database.

Duke Gonzales, USPS corporate communication specialist, said that residents had to change the villages in the city line, provided that the rest of the street address and zip code matches the one written in the letter.

Gonzales said the USPS office in Hawaii, which oversees the Guam USPS operations, is aware that the customers’ city line is different in their mailing addresses and their physical addresses. This mix-up is due to the consolidation of the Guam ZIP codes in 2001, which consolidates the three separate zip codes for addresses in Barrigada, Tamuning, and Mangilao into the 96913 zip code, with the Barrigada city designation, which may be one of many possible causes for what caused Gordon’s mail to be undeliverable.

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office audit of USPS for September 2015, it found that USPS does not have sufficient information for when mail is accepted into their system, preventing USPS from being able to track mail, which amounts to about 1.5 billion pieces. Also, the audit determined that USPS’ reporting of delivery performance information is “not sufficiently transparent” and that their policy does not even require them to report delivery information.

In its response to GAO, USPS said they are continuing to improve their services in the face of cost-cutting measures. A New York Times report stated that USPS has been hemorrhaging money in the billions since the start of the year.