ATLANTA — Six Months After New Mail Facility Launch: Delays Continue to Frustrate Georgians
This week marks six months since the launch of a significant mail facility in Georgia that has disrupted services and sparked political reactions from both sides. Residents have continued to face challenges and raise concerns since the new Regional Processing & Distribution Center opened in late February.
To date, more than 3,000 complaints about various issues, ranging from missing prescriptions to concerns over absentee ballots that never arrived, have been recorded. Many Georgians, including Leslie Johnson, have shared their frustrations with mail delays. Johnson attempted to send a package to her mother, expecting a quick process but instead faced significant delays.
“It’s crazy, it really is,” Johnson remarked, shaking her head while looking at the box she had sent. The package, which was meant to deliver cookies for her mother, surprisingly returned after three weeks. “A couple of days is one thing, but three weeks to get a box to Maryland and back again—to me, it’s a little ridiculous,” she added.
Johnson’s package, marked ‘postage due’, returned to her doorstep after an extensive and seemingly futile tracking effort. According to the tracking system, the package remained in Palmetto for around 12 days, despite Johnson paying the postage. “It showed up on my doorstep this way,” she explained. “Still don’t know why, no explanation, and when I contact Post Office service themselves, they still think it’s in transit.”
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy apologized for the delays during a U.S. Senate hearing on April 16. He reassured senators that services would improve within 60 days. DeJoy also defended the need for consolidations, which he argued were essential for the postal service’s long-term 10-year plan to streamline and save money. “The system has significant problems,” DeJoy told us back in April. “These changes are meant to salvage it for the future.”
Despite these assurances, complaints continue to pour in. Diana Naczi, another concerned resident, shared her experience of missing critical legal documents. Despite paying extra for additional tracking, the documents did not reach their destination. “I have spent hours just trying to track these documents and follow up with the places I’ve sent them to,” Naczi said.
According to Thomas Day, Vice Chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, while on-time delivery for all First-Class mail has improved to 87% from March’s 36% low, Georgia still falls below the national average of 91% for on-time delivery. “It’s not even at the level of performance that Mr. DeJoy promised at the Senate hearing in April,” Day noted.
Day uses a calculator to track improvements and projects that it could take another 6 to 8 weeks to break the 90% mark. “Some of this stuff is taking exceptionally long amounts of time to travel just within the state of Georgia,” he added.
USPS has not allowed us to tour the facility, so what goes on inside remains unclear. However, recent footage showed a backlog of trucks, and employees indicated other challenges, such as packages needing hand-processing due to a sorting issue. The Postal Service claims these problems have been resolved, but unlike First-Class mail, there is no published data to verify.
“You shouldn’t have to wonder when you put it in the mail,” Johnson emphasized. Despite repeated requests for updates on when services would return to normal in Georgia, USPS has yet to provide a clear timeline or answer questions regarding ongoing solutions at the Palmetto facility.
