Letters to the Editor: These Californians are having issues with USPS — and it's making them worried about the election

Los Angeles Times Opinion
·3 min read
Drivers line up to mail tax returns last year at a Santa Ana post office. Nationwide, fewer than 1,000 post offices are being reviewed for possible consolidation, which would require closing some of them, according to Postal Service officials.
Drivers line up to mail tax returns last year at a Santa Ana post office. (Los Angeles Times)

To the editor: I received a Father's Day card postmarked from Denver on June 17. (We mailed 100 letters to test the Postal Service. The verdict: Spotty at best, dismal at worst," Sept. 15) It arrived in my home on Sept. 7. No explanation. Correctly stamped and addressed.

Fathers Day was June 21. Anecdotal or statistical?

The system is broken and we know why.

Philip Miles, Pasadena

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To the editor: Payment for my solar panels, due on Aug. 25, was on a schedule. So I was surprised to receive a threatening letter from the company saying I was 11 days past due.

The letter arrived Sept. 11. When I checked my account, the check was indeed sent Aug. 16, and it had arrived and been cashed Sept. 10. It took three and a half weeks to get to San Diego. I have been paying bills the moment they come in, but even then, I can’t trust that the payment will arrive on time. I now have to waste time calling the company, and the company has to waste time, money and goodwill writing threatening letters to customers who aren’t actually late.

Jean Stapleton, Los Angeles

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To the editor: Up in Silicon Valley, I just received the publicized postcard from the U.S. Postal Service about voting by mail. Even though the postcard mentions that "rules and dates vary by state, so contact your election board to confirm," the advice that voters "[r]equest your mail-in ballot ... at least 15 days before Election Day" is misleading in states, such as California, where ballots are being mailed out to all registered voters automatically.

Moreover, the advice on the postcard that "[w]e recommend you mail your ballot at least 7 days before Election Day" suggests a week is enough time and that there is no other way to vote. In fact, seven days may not be enough for a deliberately slowed Postal Service. And most states, including California, have other ways to vote — including depositing one's ballot in an official drop box.

Gary Wesley, Mountain View

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To the editor: Imagine my surprise when I received an IRS notice that I was delinquent for my 2019 tax payment and that penalties applied. I sent the payment in early July with six other mailings. Two were estimated tax payments to the state that arrived no problem. One was for Zoom book club. Yet a check to the IRS never arrived.

Now I am asked to pay a penalty because the United States Postal Service did not deliver my check to the IRS as they have done without fail for multiple decades.

Thank you, Mr. DeJoy.

Jean Arnwine, Altadena

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To the editor: Chiseled in gray granite over the entrance to the New York City Post Office on 8th Avenue, a tribute to American postal workers reads: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

However, what these forces of nature can't do, President Donald J. Trump has shown he can: disrupt, delay and stop the U.S. mail. Will the post office's unofficial motto now have to be changed?

Harvey Barkan, Studio City