Timothy J. Wagner, a grocery store owner who depends heavily on advertising through bulk mail, has a problem with the U. S. Postal Service. Wagner, who owns the Super Saver market on Broadway, said he dropped off slingers advertising a Valentine’s Day sale at the Buffalo bulk mail center in late January.
But many of the 250 customers he was targeting didn’t receive the slingers until late February — well after the Feb. 14 holiday.
“All of the customers I’m mailing to live no more than three or four miles from the William Street [mail processing center]. It shouldn’t take more than two or three days to get to them,” Wagner said. “I’ve had situations where it took my mail six, seven and eight days to reach customers, and one time, it took a month.”
Wagner believes that his problem is indicative of why the Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and — according to its postmaster general — faces an unprecedented financial crisis.
And according to some local Postal Service employees, Wagner is not the only businessman in the region who has had problems with bulk mail deliveries.
In February, the National Association of Letter Carriers contacted Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-Fairport, saying bulk mail deliveries in the region are frequently backed up because of staffing shortages in the Postal Service. A Slaughter staff member has been discussing the issue with postal officials, including Kimberly Peters, Western New York district manager, the top local official of the Postal Service.
Slaughter confirmed those discussions and said her office is closely monitoring the situation involving bulk mail.
For 14 years, Wagner said, he was generally very satisfied with the job the Postal Service did in delivering his slingers at low, bulk mail rates to customers on the city’s East Side.
But in recent months, Wagner said, delays in delivery of the slingers have been costing him business.
Some people refer to bulk mail as “junk mail,” but to Wagner, it’s the lifeblood of a business that employs 17 people, including seven full-timers.
Many of his customers are senior citizens and people who receive welfare benefits. He does most of his advertising through slingers that are delivered to customers’ homes by the Postal Service.
Wagner, who also runs a home delivery business for food and laundry at the Broadway store, said many of his customers get welfare checks in the early part of each month.
“I try to get my slingers to them on the first of the month. Every day past that, I lose sales,” the businessman said. “My business depends on the post office getting these out to my customers on time.”
In the view of a postal union leader, inefficient handling of bulk mail is one reason why the Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and is facing even bigger losses this year. Postmaster General John E. Potter recently asked Congress for its permission to cut mail deliveries from six to five days a week to keep the 234-year-old service from becoming insolvent.
“There is a serious problem with bulk mail — and bulk mailers are our bread-and-butter customers,” said Robert J. McLennan, president of the Buffalo branch of the letter carriers union. “We’ve had a few situations where our carriers were given a slinger advertising sales at a store, but our carrier didn’t receive the slinger until the sale was already over.”
Letter carriers blame management for the problem, saying some post office managers have tried to cut overtime costs by delaying bulk mail deliveries until a slow day.
A Postal Service spokeswoman said managers are trying to prevent any further delays in Wagner’s deliveries.
“This is not treated lightly,” said Karen L. Mazurkiewicz, Western New York communication coordinator for the Postal Service. “What we have found is that his mail piece often falls through a gap. Though it meets automation compatibility requirements, these pieces do not always get sorted on automation machines because of their design.”
Wagner’s mail sometimes has to be sorted by hand — rather than by machine — and manual sorting is “labor intensive and susceptible to workload strains,” Mazurkiewicz said.
She said postal officials are determined to work further with Wagner until his problem is corrected.
Generally, the Postal Service tries to deliver local bulk mail— which it refers to as standard mail — within three days of receiving it.
But three days “is a standard, not a guarantee,” Mazurkiewicz said.
The Postal Service delivers about 4.4 million pieces of first-class and standard mail each day in Western and Central New York, and first-class mail gets top priority, she added.
“We do experience occasional complaints of bulk mail delays, especially around peak volume periods,” Mazurkiewicz said. “[It is] not a regular occurrence.”
Wagner said he is willing to give postal officials one more chance before trying to find another way to reach his customers. He said he currently spends $10,000 to $15,000 annually on bulk mail.
Since he first noticed the delays last August, Wagner estimated, he has talked to various postal officials “at least 80 times,” seeking a solution.
“One thing I want to say is that their customer service people are always very nice to me,” Wagner said. “But they haven’t corrected the problem.”
“I think the Postal Service is in trouble because of the way they deal with people like me,” Wagner added. “In my case, they have not done what it takes to make things right for the customer.”
