SUFFOLK, Va. — Employee availability issues at the USPS on North Main Street in Suffolk has caused some people to go more than a week without mail.
Carter Hotchkins lives near the city's historic district. Last week marked the start of an 8-day stretch in which he didn't receive any mail.
"[I'm] getting late notices saying [my bills] weren’t paid on time. I’m getting a $7 to $10 late fee charge," Hotchkins said.
Hotchkins says this has been an ongoing issue for about seven months.
"The issue with our mail is the lack of consistency. The person who delivers our mail is a lovely gentleman but when he took a vacation, we didn’t get any mail for eight days," Hotchkins said.
He says the North Main Street post office management told him they are short staffed.
Terry and Irma Mottley live nearby. They say they noticed delivery problems when they set up their mail to get forwarded to Florida while they were on vacation.
"Some of it was forwarded. Some of it wasn’t," Irma Mottley said.
Irma Mottley says she was expecting important documents.
"It got to be three months down the road and I should have gotten like three checks and I did not," she said.
Here's what she says happened when they got back in town: "Guess what’s in our mailbox? The forms that we should have received through mail forwarding to fill out so that I could have been getting all these checks all these months."
News 3's Leondra Head reached out to the U.S. Postal Service about the delays at the North Main Street location. They sent the following statement below:
Most customers in the Suffolk are receiving normal mail and package delivery. There have been some recent unforeseen employee availability issues at that office. When possible, we implement contingency plans, such as bringing in employees from nearby offices and staggering routes. We expect delivery to return to normal very soon, and we will continue to monitor delivery in the area. If a customer is not receiving normal mail delivery, we encourage them to contact their local Post Office or call 1-800-ASK-USPS. We thank customers for their continued support.
