The US Postal Service (USPS) promises to deliver the first class letter to the addressee’s mailbox one to three business days after it is sent. And the journalists of the Los Angeles Times decided to check whether these delivery times of letters are being observed today, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
They conducted a small experiment by sending 100 first class letters from 20 post offices located in Los Angeles County. The letters were sent over a three-day period in late August (during which time Postal Service chief Louis Dejoy was testifying before Congress) to various locations in California, as well as Austin, Texas, Atlanta, Georgia, and Washington.
The result of the experiment: almost half of the letters were delivered late. “The work of the post office this summer can be described as unstable at best, and disappointing at worst,” the newspaper’s article says.
In the above-mentioned cities outside of California, the letters, according to the statement of the head of the American Union of Postal Workers Gaara Davis, were to be delivered within three working days. However, one letter arrived in Austin 11 days later and the second arrived after 8. The three letters sent to Washington took three days to cover the distance from the sorting center to a house just one mile away.
As for the letters that were supposed to be delivered within two working days, only 75% met this “window”, which is significantly lower than the level of the second quarter – 92.4%.