A snail's pace: Phoenix ranks second in the nation for delayed mail

Phoenix ranks second in the nation for delayed mail

FOX 10's Steve Nielsen reports.

PHOENIX - Phoenix has some of the most delayed mail in the country - second only to north Houston.

That’s why the USPS inspected and audited the mail operation in Phoenix to find out what’s going wrong.

Randy Looke has FreedomGear.Org shipping down to a science, even with a camera shot to confirm every package sent. His company sells survival gear online, and getting it to the customer on time is vital. He says they ship out around 200 packages per day.

Once the bin is stuffed, it's rolled out, and the postal worker scans it out the door.

"It’s out of our hands," Looke said. "There’s nothing we can do. Now it’s up to the post office to take care of it, and that’s that’s the problem."

Every package the Chandler company ships goes through Phoenix.

According to a new USPS inspector general audit, 2.8 billion pieces of mail were reported as delayed in Phoenix last year. That’s the second highest amount in the country.

"We can’t figure out why," Looke said. "And our emails blow up with people like, ‘Where’s my package? You can see it left your hands 5 days ago.’ It’s still in Phoenix, I can’t control the mail."

According to the audit, management did not have a system to segregate managed mail based on its intended delivery date. The audit also recommended changes be made to ensure accurate reporting of delayed mail.

Phoenix postal officials agreed with the audit and have already implemented changes.

Looke says he’s not the only one hopeful that this can lead to less delayed shipments.

"Falls on the business owner," he said. "All of the businesses, all of the business owners I know that ship USPS - it’s a major, major headache."

He says he might consider switching to another carrier if the headache isn’t fixed soon.

"The simplicity of USPS works," Looke said. "The problem is…they don’t as a delivery company. They don’t."

FOX 10 reached out to USPS to see if they could answer questions about the audit, but were directed to their report, which agreed with the findings.

Read the audit report here: https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/delayed-mail-phoenix-az-processing-and-distribution-center