A FALSE letter from the USPS made one community panic, leading them to believe that they had to pay for new mailboxes.
Residents were told they needed to install new curbside mailboxes so that postal workers no longer have to leave their vehicles to deliver mail.
“This is hard on us to have to spend the money to put up a new mailbox at the curb,” community member Joe Zepeda told local CBS affiliate KHOU.
“We just don’t have it being on a fixed income. It’s kind of hard on us.”
The Houston neighborhood first received a notice about the mailbox changes on March 13.
The USPS warned the community that if they didn’t comply by March 27, their mail would be returned to the sender.
Houston’s East End resident Joe Vigil contemplating “protesting” the new rule.
“I’m hoping we get some resolution before then,” he said.
“I’m kind of tempted not to do it just to protest but then again they’ve got the upper hand.”
Within hours of KHOU interviewing community members, the USPS confirmed that the letter was sent out in error.
“In this instance, the notices requiring customers to move their mailboxes to the curb were sent in error,” a statement from the agency read.
“Any customer who received a notice should disregard any instructions or information provided.
“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”
The news came as a major sigh of relief for Vigil and other East End residents.
“We avoided a big problem for the whole neighborhood…it was great,” Vigil told KHOU.
“We’re doing real great now. It’s a reason to celebrate.”
SNAIL MAIL
The letter mess-up comes after the Postmaster Louis DeJoy admitted the USPS is a “broken system.”
DeJoy addressed Congress to highlight the postal system’s financial instability, referring to it as a “broken business model” that urgently needed fundamental changes to survive.
USPS Statement
The USPS responded to the letter sent in error:
He acknowledged errors in sending out notices requesting customers to relocate their mailboxes to the curb, clarifying that these notices should be ignored and apologizing for any resulting inconvenience.
DeJoy emphasized the challenge of overhauling an organization that had already incurred significant losses amounting to nearly $100 billion, with further projections estimating an additional $200 billion deficit, stressing the formidable nature of the task ahead.
“Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.”
DeJoy announced a voluntary early retirement program where 10,000 employees would be offered $15,000 to retire earlier than planned.
The postmaster said he hoped to partner with the Department of Government Efficiency to see through his 10-year Delivering for America plan.
“The Doge team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with,” DeJoy wrote.
