North Side Residents See Improvement In Mail Delivery Following Recent Issues
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For months CBS 2 has been trying to get to the bottom of mail problems -- missing medications, sensitive documents disappearing, Christmas gift no shows. It was all part of the United States Postal Service's failure last fall and winter that left customers at their wits ends.
More than seven months later, CBS 2's Marie Saavedra went to see if anything has improved.
It was late November when Pauline Scott had had enough.
"My husband's license plates and city stickers have not arrived," she said then.
She was one hundreds we heard from whose mail was just not showing up. Since then, she had a baby and gained new perspective on the problems with shipping in her North Side neighborhood.
"I wanted to really make sure that we had some kind of measurement," she said.
Scott herself put together a poll last winter, sent out on social media, to gauge her neighbors 'postal service from the Rogers Park office. More than 130 responded, saying more than 60% of packages were late or never delivered. And the majority who called for help, couldn't get anyone to pick up the phone.
"Most people had had trouble with the post office for at least three years ," she said. "So that told me this isn't COVID; this isn't staffing, this isn't the new postmaster general of the United States."
So eight months later has anything changed? Scott says yes.
"We have a mail carrier, consistently. We have service consistently, and we regularly receive mail, unlike last year," she said.
CBS 2 asked USPS what it's been doing these many months to fix these problems, but a spokesman denied our request for an on camera interview. He said in a statement USPS service does 'continue to improve.'
We know of one effort. In June, the post office set up customer service hotlines specifically for Mount Greenwood and Morgan Park, two of the city's worst trouble spots for delivery. USPS said they're getting calls. And Scott hopes those residents are getting the results she is. But she's not done keeping tabs.
"I do plan on doing the survey again in about four to six months to see where we're at right before the holidays," she said.
