If you have not mailed your holiday cards yet, you may want to pick up the pace.For months, WLWT has been reporting about a growing issue of mail theft, mail delays and further anticipated delays during the busy holiday shipping season.USPS says it has been working all year to increase the amount of full-time staff and seasonal workers nationwide and upgrade equipment. Still, WLWT has been hearing from viewers experiencing mail theft, mail delays and missing packages for months. One of the people who has personally experienced problems with delivery is Myles Zernik-Traxler, who runs an online true crime-inspired apparel company called "Forensic Myles."She has been trying to solve a mail mystery for a couple months now. She dropped a dozen plastic packages intended for customers in a USPS blue collection box on Plainville Road in Madisonville on Sept. 27."I thought all was good, didn't really think about it until I had a customer in Florida mention that they hadn't received their package," she said. After doing a little research, checking the tracking numbers and making several calls, she realized none of the packages had reached their destinations. In fact, they were never even scanned into the system. "In the beginning, we thought that maybe they'd been stolen out of the box, they didn't even make it, but then when we realized that they had been picked up. There was confirmation that they had been picked up -- cause I have very unique packaging," she said. "USPS and shipping is pivotal to whether or not I can be successful."More than two months later, none of the packages have been delivered or found."I probably lost around 800 dollars just in materials, time, packaging, shipping costs themselves and I also had a return for my grandma, so my grandma also lost $100 that day," Zernik-Traxler said. "The one common thing that I heard from every USPS worker that I spoke to here, in other places in Ohio, in Florida, in DC, everywhere was don't trust the blue boxes. Don't put anything in there."WLWT conducted an experiment to test mail delivery.We took 50 letters and addressed each to the WLWT news station in Mount Auburn. We used the station address as the return address also. Several members of the WLWT staff went to various post offices, blue collection boxes and even home mailboxes throughout Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, as well as Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties in northern Kentucky. We mailed the letters out on the same day to begin the journey back to the station. We mailed them on a Tuesday in October, well before any delays could be attributed to the holiday rush. Most of the letters arrived, but a couple never did. Thirty of the 50 letters arrived at the station in two days.Seventeen of the 50 letters arrived in seven days. One letter mailed from the blue collection box across the street from the station took 16 days to arrive.Two letters never arrived, one mailed from a blue collection box in Northside and the other from a blue collection box right outside the post office in Norwood. USPS advises customers to ship your mail and packages by Dec. 17 for regular shipping, Dec. 19 for priority shipping or Dec. 23 for priority express shipping if you want your items to arrive by Dec. 25. A USPS spokeswoman released the following statement to WLWT."The Postal Service has been preparing for the holiday peak — the time between Black Friday and New Year's Day — since January, building on investments and organizational strategy improvements made ahead of the successful 2021 holiday mailing and shipping season.Preparations include converting 100,000 workers to full-time since the beginning of 2021, with more than 41,000 part-time workers converted to full-time since January 2022. A national drive began in October to hire an additional 20,000 seasonal employees, an extra 10.5 million square feet of space has been added to the network to process packages, 23 temporary peak annexes have been opened in addition to the 48 parcel support annexes opened for peak 2021, and we've installed 137 new package sorting machines. This brings the organization's total to 249 new processing machines since the launch of the Delivering for America plan in March 2021. The new equipment combined with increased operational and network improvements will expand the organization's package processing capacity to 60 million packages a day.As in previous years, Sunday delivery has been expanded in select locations that experience high package volumes. The Postal Service already delivers packages on Sundays in most major cities. Mail carriers will also deliver Priority Mail Express packages for an additional fee on Christmas Day in select locations.
If you have not mailed your holiday cards yet, you may want to pick up the pace.
For months, WLWT has been reporting about a growing issue of mail theft, mail delays and further anticipated delays during the busy holiday shipping season.
USPS says it has been working all year to increase the amount of full-time staff and seasonal workers nationwide and upgrade equipment.
Still, WLWT has been hearing from viewers experiencing mail theft, mail delays and missing packages for months.
One of the people who has personally experienced problems with delivery is Myles Zernik-Traxler, who runs an online true crime-inspired apparel company called "Forensic Myles."
She has been trying to solve a mail mystery for a couple months now. She dropped a dozen plastic packages intended for customers in a USPS blue collection box on Plainville Road in Madisonville on Sept. 27.
"I thought all was good, didn't really think about it until I had a customer in Florida mention that they hadn't received their package," she said.
After doing a little research, checking the tracking numbers and making several calls, she realized none of the packages had reached their destinations. In fact, they were never even scanned into the system.
"In the beginning, we thought that maybe they'd been stolen out of the box, they didn't even make it, but then when we realized that they had been picked up. There was confirmation that they had been picked up -- cause I have very unique packaging," she said. "USPS and shipping is pivotal to whether or not I can be successful."
More than two months later, none of the packages have been delivered or found.
"I probably lost around 800 dollars just in materials, time, packaging, shipping costs themselves and I also had a return for my grandma, so my grandma also lost $100 that day," Zernik-Traxler said.
"The one common thing that I heard from every USPS worker that I spoke to here, in other places in Ohio, in Florida, in DC, everywhere was don't trust the blue boxes. Don't put anything in there."
WLWT conducted an experiment to test mail delivery.
We took 50 letters and addressed each to the WLWT news station in Mount Auburn. We used the station address as the return address also.
Several members of the WLWT staff went to various post offices, blue collection boxes and even home mailboxes throughout Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties, as well as Kenton, Campbell and Boone counties in northern Kentucky.
We mailed the letters out on the same day to begin the journey back to the station. We mailed them on a Tuesday in October, well before any delays could be attributed to the holiday rush.
Most of the letters arrived, but a couple never did.
Thirty of the 50 letters arrived at the station in two days.
Seventeen of the 50 letters arrived in seven days.
One letter mailed from the blue collection box across the street from the station took 16 days to arrive.
Two letters never arrived, one mailed from a blue collection box in Northside and the other from a blue collection box right outside the post office in Norwood.
USPS advises customers to ship your mail and packages by Dec. 17 for regular shipping, Dec. 19 for priority shipping or Dec. 23 for priority express shipping if you want your items to arrive by Dec. 25.
A USPS spokeswoman released the following statement to WLWT.
"The Postal Service has been preparing for the holiday peak — the time between Black Friday and New Year's Day — since January, building on investments and organizational strategy improvements made ahead of the successful 2021 holiday mailing and shipping season.
Preparations include converting 100,000 workers to full-time since the beginning of 2021, with more than 41,000 part-time workers converted to full-time since January 2022. A national drive began in October to hire an additional 20,000 seasonal employees, an extra 10.5 million square feet of space has been added to the network to process packages, 23 temporary peak annexes have been opened in addition to the 48 parcel support annexes opened for peak 2021, and we've installed 137 new package sorting machines. This brings the organization's total to 249 new processing machines since the launch of the Delivering for America plan in March 2021. The new equipment combined with increased operational and network improvements will expand the organization's package processing capacity to 60 million packages a day.
As in previous years, Sunday delivery has been expanded in select locations that experience high package volumes. The Postal Service already delivers packages on Sundays in most major cities. Mail carriers will also deliver Priority Mail Express packages for an additional fee on Christmas Day in select locations.
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