USPS to audit 3 KC-area post offices
MISSION, Kan. (KCTV) - Complaints about delayed mail in Johnson County, Kansas, have sparked an audit by the United States Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General. The audit will include three post office locations in Johnson, Wyandotte and Jackson Counties.
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) who represents Johnson County, is the U.S. Senate penned a letter to the Postmaster General in February seeking an explanation for delays he’d heard about from constituents. In March, a follow-up letter signed by all four U.S. senators in Kansas and Missouri requested an audit.
The audit will focus on the following three locations:
- Hickman Mills Post Office, Kansas City, MO
- Robert L. Roberts Post Office, Kansas City, KS
- Shawnee Mission Post Office, Mission, KS
It is not clear if the locations were selected at random or based on complaints.
KCTV5 visited the Shawnee Mission Post Office to ask customers about their experiences.
One woman gave a glowing report and a shout-out to her regular mail carrier. Another said during the winter months, delivery was haphazard at best but that it has been great ever since they got a full-time carrier assigned to her route. A third person said her mail service goes well when her routine carrier is on the route but can be hit-or-miss when there is a substitute.
There were also complaints including late mail, lost mail, damaged mail, trouble tracking packages and difficulty getting reimbursed for lost or damaged packages despite having them insured. One woman spent what seemed like nearly an hour Monday trying to locate her husband’s port, which was lost in the mail, as their overseas trip was looming.
The experiences they described seemed in line with deficiencies found in a previous audit that took place more than a year ago.
That earlier, separate audit focused specifically on delayed mail in Kansas City, Missouri. It was requested by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who emphasized in both a 2022 letter and a 2023 letter a concern about the Northland. The audit included primarily, but not entirely, Clay and Platte County locations.
Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) and Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) that year also co-signed a letter seeking a Kansas City listening session with the Postmaster General to hear complaints directly from residents.
The results of the March 2023 audit were published in August. It reviewed 10 postal stations in the city as well as the USPS processing and distribution center in Kansas City, Missouri.
The review found mail delays at seven of the 10 sites and at the processing and distribution center.
Other issues it found included missing or inaccurate package scans and instances where carriers improperly scanned packages as delivered.
Managers placed the blame on staffing, citing absenteeism, a shortage of applicants and a long hiring process as their challenges.
The audit gave a list of recommendations to management at the locations they reviewed. They included the following:
- Implement a plan to hire and retain staff
- Develop a process to reduce absenteeism
- Review package scanning performance daily and enforce compliance
KCTV5 emailed USPS Public Affairs to ask if anyone had followed up on those recommendations and if any improvement occurred. We have not yet received a reply.
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