Category: Post Office

Hollywood Post Office, College Park

In recent years, the City Council has received complaints or sent letters to USPS and federal representatives to discuss many issues at two College Park Post Offices.

In the past, we collected some of the complaints from residents to the Post Office Operations. We also sent a letter to Congressman Hoyer with these issues.

Unfortunately, many of these issues still persist.

The potential issues the Council will discuss at tomorrow’s meeting include:

(a) North College Park Post Office Customer Experience: customer service complaints.
(b) Mail delivery issues, such as mail being miss-delivered, mail taking a long time to reach its destination, mail getting lost.
(c) Theft of mail from post office mailboxes: (d) Condition of the Calvert Road Post Office building: Public Services reports that repairs have been made.
(d) Noise from driver training in the parking lot at Calvert Road Post Office: Public Services investigated and reports that noise readings do not exceed the City’s noise code.

The City understands that US postal police are conducting a region-wide investigation.

Mr. John Campbell, Regional Director of Post Office Operations, and Ms. Tanya White, Postmaster, North College Park Post Office, will attend the Council Worksession.

Please let me know if you continue to have issues with the services at the Hollywood Post Office.

Many of the residents have shared not so great experiences with the College Park Post Office.

Here is a piece of information about a great service that the Post Office has been offering. The service called the “Informed Delivery® by USPS®” that allows you to digitally preview your mail and manage your packages scheduled to arrive soon! Informed Delivery allows you to view greyscale images of the exterior, address side of letter-sized mailpieces and track packages in one convenient location.

Here is one caveat for this service. Images are only provided for letter-sized mailpieces that are processed through USPS’ automated equipment.

Here’s the link: https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action. Registration is completely free.

At tonight’s Council meeting, the City Council will consider approving a letter to Congressman Hoyer asking him to look into the irregularities at the College Park Post Office. Many residents continue to express concerns about the service at this post office. Please see a draft copy of the letter below. Residents will have an opportunity to speak about the post office service before the meeting.

November 15, 2016

Honorable Steny Hoyer U.S. Representative,

5th Congressional District

1705 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Congressman Hoyer:

I am writing to bring to your attention certain ongoing problems at the College Park Post Office located at 9591 Baltimore Avenue.

Residents have informed the City Council about poor customer service and related problems with mail delivery. In 2011 and 2014, the

Mayor and Councilmembers sent correspondence to U.S Post Office staff regarding similar issues. Although no replies were received, some customer service improvements were noted. However, residents are again experiencing discourteous customer service and problems with mail delivery. Some residents have stopped using that location even though it is more convenient for them. The City of College Park recognizes the hard work of certain staff members at this location and throughout the Postal Service, and therefore is puzzled and disappointed by this continued sub-par service.

The City would greatly appreciate your staff looking into this situation and letting us know what actions have been or are being taken to ensure a satisfactory level of customer service.

Thank you for your service to our residents, and thank you for helping the City of College Park resolve the issues noted above.

Sincerely, Patrick L. Wojahn Mayor

cc: The Hon. Dannielle M. Glaros, Vice-Chair, Prince George’s County Council

The Hon. Mary Lehman, Prince George’s County Council The Maryland 21st District Delegation

Megan J. Brennan, U.S. Postmaster General

Ms. Tanya White, Postmaster, 9591 Baltimore Avenue

Recently, Council member Wojahn and I received a number of complaints from our residents about many irregularities of the local post office services. This led us to send a letter to Edward Williamson, the manager of the Capital area post office operations . Please see that below. Also, if you have experienced similar irregularities, please let me know.

Edward Williamson
Manager, Post Office Operations
Capital District
United States Postal Services
Capitol Heights, MD  20791

Mr. Williamson,

We are writing to follow up with the letter sent by the College Park City Council on September 13, 2011, regarding concerns about employee standards at the Hollywood Post Office at 9591 Baltimore Ave.  In that letter, a copy of which is attached for your reference, the council documented concerns about lost and misdelivered mail, failure of the post office to hold mail for people who went on vacation, poor customer service, and other complaints that residents brought to our attention.

A few new complaints recently came to our attention of lost and misdelivered mail, and we decided to request feedback from the community about the service that community members have been receiving from the Hollywood Post Office.  We are writing to report that feedback to you and request follow-up on some remaining concerns.

Fortunately, it seems that service has improved in some respects at this post office.  Although residents still report some occasional misdirected or lost mail, several have commented that the situation has improved itself, and some have particularly complimented at least one of the carriers, who has exhibited professionalism and a friendly demeanor.

Problems continue, however, especially with the staff working at the Hollywood post office itself.  Residents continue to report rude and discourteous staff when they need to go to the post office to take care of their business.  They continue to have problems with requests that should be simple, such as requests to hold mail.

Attached is a list of comments and concerns raised among residents over the past few months.  If you would like further information about any particular issue or incident, please contact us at the contact information provided below and we will follow up with the resident to see if the resident will be willing to speak with you directly.  Otherwise, please contact us so that we can meet and discuss these concerns and what the United States Postal Service can do to continue to improve services at the Hollywood Post Office.

Sincerely,

Fazlul Kabir and Patrick Wojahn

Read More

Postal trouble - do you have one?

It looks like that some neighbors have started to experience irregularities in mail deliveries from our local Post Office (again!).

The issue was previously discussed in the Council but not much change has happened from the sides of post office.

Council member Wojahn and I are planning to escalate this issue to higher offices.

A few days ago, I asked residents to send us their experiences with our local post office recently. So far we have both received dozens of complaints – which include:

• Misdelivery of mail:
• Lost mail
• Poor service at post office itself
• Not picking mail up
• Not delivering or delay in delivering mail :
• Miscellaneous

If you have experienced or know of someone who has experienced any such irregularities, please let us know. We’ll add those to our list.

Yet another returned mail

In case the number of stories on returned mails by our north College Park Post Office is not enough to justify the case against our local postal delivery system’s irregular practices, let’s add this one too.

I mailed a book early last week to an address in Ohio via media mail, and duh! after 4 days, it came to the sender, that is me! The mail never reached its destination.

I guess the postal service did not see the word “From”, clearly written on top of my address.

Funny that, this incident happened just in the same week, when the Mayor and the Council requested a meeting with a U.S. Postal Service manager to discuss ongoing complaints from north College Park residents about alleged unreliable mail delivery and poor customer service at the Post Office at Baltimore Avenue and Hollywood Road.

The north College Park Citizens Association also discussed this matter early this year, after our newsletters returned to us, noting a vacancy as the reason, when they’ve known the residence was not empty.