U.S. Rep. Angie Craig solicits comments on mail service issues, gets more than 3,000 complaints

Olivia Stevens, Pioneer Press
Updated ·6 min read
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U.S. Rep. Angie Craig has received more than 3,000 complaints on Postal Service issues — including lack of communication, delays and lost items — after surveying constituents for more than a week.

Craig, who represents the 2nd Congressional District spanning Dakota, Scott, Goodhue and Wabasha counties, as well as parts of Rice and Washington counties, sent an open letter expressing her frustrations with the issue to U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in December. Craig said she hasn’t received a response.

Since then, she said she’s received hundreds of phone calls about mail issues, leading her to develop an online survey open until Friday to hear constituents’ concerns. Delays have been attributed, at least in part, to a staffing problem, Craig said.

“There seems to be something more systemic at play,” said Craig. “I wanted to compare what I’m being told by Postal Service officials with the stories that my constituents are telling me, and that’s why we thought going straight to folks who are experiencing Postal Service issues was the right decision.”

To track mail or request assistance from the U.S. Postal Service, residents can go to https://www.usps.com/help/missing-mail.htm. However, Craig encourages constituents who are struggling to navigate or access any federal agency, including the post office, to reach out to her casework team for support at https://craig.house.gov/casework.

Delays in southern suburbs

Since the survey opened on Jan. 26, Craig said her office has received more than 3,000 complaints, which she plans to send directly to DeJoy.

Craig said the range of issues residents experience varies by city and their local Postal Service workforce shortage. In her district, Apple Valley’s service has stabilized over the past couple of weeks and Lakeville is “on track to stable,” while Eagan is still experiencing significant service issues, she said.

“I think it’s really important that the postmaster general understands that if he’s getting a report that services are stable nationwide, that is not the case currently in many cities throughout the Second District of Minnesota, and apparently, based on the volume of survey responses received, that is not the case throughout Minnesota,” said Craig.

Lakeville resident Michael Bargas filled out the survey and explained that he’s frequently lost mail, including checks, on top of delivery delays dating back to last August. He said for a while his area was receiving mail between one and three times per week, leading his neighbors to start a community text chain to notify each other when they saw the mail carrier had come.

Last month, Bargas said medication he had shipped from his pharmacy was lost in transit. When he went to the pharmacy for help tracking the package, he was told the package had left the mail room, but the post office claimed not to have it.

“My response to them was, ‘I’ve never had a problem with the pharmacy. Why would I trust them over the mail service given the record of late?’” Bargas asked. “The pharmacy had to courier the one medication because they were afraid that I wasn’t gonna receive it on time, and I think going forward, I’m just gonna have to have the stuff couriered to the house, and the pharmacy’s in Minneapolis.”

Klobuchar also sent letter

Sen. Amy Klobuchar sent her own letter to DeJoy in December stating concerns about mail service issues in Minnesota.

In a statement Wednesday, she said: “From paychecks to prescriptions and staying connected to family and friends, Minnesotans rely on the Postal Service every day and delays are unacceptable. That’s why I spoke with USPS’s Minnesota-North Dakota District Manager Anthony Williams about the delivery issues affecting the Twin Cities and surrounding communities, and pushed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy for further assistance. Delivery has been affected in part by staffing shortages. Dozens of new workers have now been hired to boost service, but there’s more work to do to address delays.”

Postal Service spokesperson Desai Abdul-Razzaaq said in a statement Wednesday that “the Postal Service is committed to providing the best possible service to our customers, and we apologize for any inconvenience that may have been experienced. We will continue flexing our available resources to match the workload and are proud of the efforts of postal employees as they define essential public service every day.”

He added: “When mail service issues occur, we take steps to quickly resolve customer concerns. We gladly work to address any specific issue from the community when brought to our attention and we encourage customers to reach out to their local postal station. Customers can also go to our website usps.com and click on ‘Contact us’ at the bottom of our homepage or utilize this direct web address: https://usps.force.com/emailus/s/. Every email will be carefully documented and appropriate action taken to strengthen service.”

Communication is key

Poor service by local post offices goes beyond lost mail and delays, some residents say.

Paul and Janet Onderick of White Bear Lake, as well as their neighbor Marisa Hubin, said they were not notified when after heavy snow and plowing pushed snow in front of the mailboxes, carriers no longer delivered to certain addresses on their street until residents dug out their mailboxes themselves.

“White Bear Avenue has two lanes in each direction, no shoulder and the speed limit’s 40 miles an hour, which is routinely ignored,” said Paul Onderick. “People are often going 50 miles an hour by here, so there’s some significant risk to having to go out and stand on the road and clear snow.”

Due to this risk, the White Bear Lake post office agreed to hold the neighbors’ mail, so they could just come pick it up. However, the neighbors soon realized they were no longer receiving mail there, either, and inquired once more.

“I think this has now been probably like two and a half, almost three weeks of not receiving anything besides … little junk mail that I had picked up when I went to the post office,” said Hubin. “I was finally like, ‘I’m assuming there are some things missing here.’ And it was at that time that they told me actually all of our mail got sent back.”

Frustrated about the lack of communication, the neighbors said they are concerned about where important bills and notices will end up and are concerned about the incident repeating itself in the event of another heavy snowfall.

“Now in January, what did you get in the mail?” said Paul Onderick. “Tax information from various people, which they have potentially returned to sender. I have no way of knowing what they returned to sender or to whom, and I don’t know what those people will do when these things come back.”

Said Hubin: “I know now that if they can’t reach the mailbox at all, they’re not going to try and they’re not going to make a big effort to tell me about it. I’m just gonna go to the post office at that point and probably forward my mail, so that at least it can get delivered somewhere else.”

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