How has the mail delivery been lately? U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia says for many of us, it’s been, well, it stinks, especially in metro Atlanta.
Ossoff did not mince words in a Senate hearing on Tuesday, telling Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that delays in mail delivery for metro Atlanta have been unacceptable.
“I have constituents with prescriptions that aren’t being delivered,” Ossoff said, during a hearing in Washington. “I’ve got constituents who can’t pay their rent and their mortgages. I’ve got businesses who aren’t able to ship products or receive supplies.”
He wasn’t telling DeJoy anything he didn’t know. It turns out the postal service has tracking data that includes a public website for customers to see how delivery is trending by state and region.
USPS doesn’t provide details down to your ZIP Code or even for just metro Atlanta. But the Service Performance page does give customers a chance to see how mail delivery has performed by week, month and quarter. The results are broken by first-class mail, what the postal service calls “marketing mail” and periodicals.
You can also see first-class data broken down by postcards and letters, or by delivery options ranging from two-day to five-day.
For the week of March 23, the report card for USPS in Georgia said the average piece of mail took 4.9 days to deliver, compared to 2.6 days for the same period a year ago. Just under 43 percent of the mail was delivered on time, but it rose 59.9% by the measure of “almost” on time, which is not actually the postal service phrasing. The website calls this rating “Performance Plus 1,” meaning it measured delivery that was within one extra day of being on time.
Individual letters and cards mailed within the Atlanta area, which should arrive in a generous two-day window, met that standard only 16% of the time in March, according to USPS.
Here is a snapshot of that same period, March 23-29, the most recent available for Georgia, the South and the U.S.
| Area | On time percentage | On time plus 1 day | Days to Deliver Now vs. Year Ago |
|---|---|---|---|
| Georgia | 42.48% | 59.9% | 4.9 / 2.6 |
| South | 78.71% | 89.03% | 3.2 / 2.6 |
| National | 83.3% | 92.7% | 3.0 / 2.6 |
Source: The Service Performance web page at USPS.com
Credit: USPS.com
Credit: USPS.com
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