Few Answers to Missing and Months-Late Mail: ‘The Postal Service in Richmond is Broken’

In December, the busiest month of the year for charitable donations, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture received only seven pieces of mail.

What the museum did get: dozens of calls from supporters asking why the institution — Virginia’s oldest museum, now operated as a private nonprofit — had not cashed the checks they had mailed.

Then, in late January, “magically three cases of mail showed up postmarked in October and November,” said president and CEO Jamie Bosket. “That bundle of mail that came represented about $300,000 in memberships. … We still expect that we have maybe as much as $100,000 in missing donations.”

Bosket wasn’t alone in his experience. During a Friday roundtable at the museum convened by U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, residents and representatives of businesses and groups in the Richmond area reported a spike in problems with mail delivery throughout the fall that they said have yet to be resolved or explained.

Mike Nolan, a resident of Richmond’s Bellevue neighborhood, said while mail delivery “has never been good,” beginning this September, critical pieces of correspondence ranging from his electoral ballot to utility bills to government missives failed to show up at his house. Complaints got him nowhere, he said. One postal worker told him to contact U.S. Postmaster Louis DeJoy.

Brian Lynn, the owner of a commercial kitchen equipment company Victor Products, said his mail also regularly fails to show up at his business — a problem that culminated this December in a large check from the University of Virginia being stolen and deposited by a thief. The check was only recovered because a cautious bank employee called Lynn.

Taylor Brewer, an employee of developer Stylecraft Homes who manages homeowners associations, said one of the company’s properties “went six months without daily mail service.” And Nancye Hunter, an employee at a machine shop in the city’s Southside, said this June, “we had nine business days where we did not receive a single parcel of mail at all.”

“This isn’t a new problem,” she said. “This is a problem that’s been allowed to snowball. And it’s gotten exponentially worse.”

Members of Virginia’s congressional delegation have sent multiple letters to the U.S. Postal Service raising concerns about mail delivery issues in not only the Richmond area but also other parts of Virginia.

“I am concerned that Virginia communities as far-flung as Smyth County in Southwest Virginia, the Richmond area (nearly 300 miles away from Chilhowie by highway), and Arlington, across the river from Washington, D.C., are all experiencing missing bills, medications, tax documents, and days/weeks without mail,” Kaine wrote in a May 2023 letter.

But Richmond’s issues have proved some of the most persistent. In December, Kaine and U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, asked USPS Virginia District Manager Gerald Roane to hold a town hall about mail delivery issues and postal thefts.

In January, the problems again made headlines when the Richmond VA Medical Center reported that delivery delays had left hundreds of testing samples used to screen veterans for colon cancer unusable.

“We want to be clear; this is unacceptable. These issues with postal delays have caused unnecessary stress and harm for our constituents and suggest to us that the issues in the region are worse than we thought,” seven bipartisan members of Virginia’s congressional delegation wrote to DeJoy and Roane after the VA issue surfaced. “We are unsatisfied with the level of urgency and responsiveness the agency has demonstrated with the issues we have raised previously, and this must change with this new revelation.”

On Jan. 17, Roane declined the request to hold a town hall, saying such gatherings “complicate” efforts to monitor and ensure customer service, “rarely provide any meaningful insights to improve operations, and raise questions about basic fairness.”

Richmond’s regional mail processing center in Sandston “did experience operational complications during its setup and roll-out,” he conceded. However, he said, “these have been addressed and the facility is now positioned to provide the state-of-the-art mail and package processing for which it was designed.”

USPS officials also backed out of a December town hall organized by Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Colette McEachin to discuss mail delivery issues, mail fraud and mail theft. And they declined a request by Kaine to tour the Sandston facility.

“The Postal Service in Richmond is broken,” McEachin said Friday.

Kaine described the situation as “at a crisis level in Richmond since the fall.”

“We’ve tried to do town hall meetings with the post office,” he continued. “They’ve said no. We’ve tried to tour the distribution center. They’ve said no.”

In response to a request for comment, a USPS spokesperson said that “while we were unable to provide a tour last week, we want all our stakeholders to know under Delivering For America, the Postal Service’s 10-year plan, we are maintaining universal six-day mail delivery and expanded seven-day package delivery, stabilizing our workforce, and spurring innovation to meet the needs of our modern customers.”

The Postal Service said customers with questions about mail delivery can contact their local post office, call the Virginia District Consumer Affairs Office at 804-775-6313, or send a message on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, at @USPSHelp. The destination address or tracking number can help expedite any investigation.

by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sarah Vogelsong for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on Facebook and Twitter.