During the pandemic, the U.S. Postal Service struggled with reliability, but one would hope those days are now in the rearview mirror. So, when a Massachusetts woman said they lost her wedding invitations, and she couldn’t get any explanation, NewsCenter 5 found the Postal Service hasn’t necessarily delivered on its own improvement goals.Planning a wedding is filled with milestone moments, but one of the biggest is mailing out those invitations. It can suddenly make the big day feel very real, especially once those RSVPs start rolling in. But for that to happen, the wedding invites actually have to make it to guests.That hasn’t been the case for Gillian Shea, who says the USPS lost 82 of the 85 invitations she mailed back in August from the Roslindale Post Office. She even made sure to have them weighed prior to mailing to make sure she applied the correct postage.”The fact that they just seemed to have vanished into thin air is pretty frustrating,” Shea said. “It’ll make for a fun story, I guess. But right now, it doesn’t feel so fun.”Shea says she and her fiancée spent about $500 on the missing invitations and then had to spend more money to send an electronic invitation. There’s no pattern for the three that actually made it through the mail. One was delivered locally to Scituate, Massachusetts, another turned up on Long Island, and the third was delivered in Upstate New York. Shea filed a claim for one of the missing invites, but it hasn’t turned up anything. A Postal Service spokesperson told NewsCenter 5 that there’s no mechanism to track first-class mail like this.”The overall answer was ‘We have no idea,’” Shea said she was told. “’Your guess is as good as ours.’”Shea’s story raises questions about whether the Postal Service has mailed it in when it comes to improving reliability post-pandemic. Delivery delays increased dramatically during 2020, which Postmaster General Louis DeJoy blamed at the time on COVID-19-related absences. But reliability is still not back to what it was before the pandemic.”A substantial portion of our delays are related to COVID,” DeJoy told Congress in the summer of 2020. “We’re short 200 carriers, and this can go on for a while.”First-class mail dropped from approximately 95 percent on-time delivery before the pandemic to 82% after the nation shut down in 2020. It has rebounded, but the most recent figures show it’s only 91% — meaning about one piece of mail out of every 10 is at least delayed. The Postal Service missed its own goal this past year of reaching 92.5% on time.Here’s a link to the most recent USPS figuresAs for Shea, she’s holding on tight to the last copy she has of her wedding invitation. “We’re going to keep it for a whole memento of what never happened, I guess,” she said.Engagement photos for this story were provided by K. Engel Photography.
During the pandemic, the U.S. Postal Service struggled with reliability, but one would hope those days are now in the rearview mirror.
So, when a Massachusetts woman said they lost her wedding invitations, and she couldn’t get any explanation, NewsCenter 5 found the Postal Service hasn’t necessarily delivered on its own improvement goals.
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Planning a wedding is filled with milestone moments, but one of the biggest is mailing out those invitations. It can suddenly make the big day feel very real, especially once those RSVPs start rolling in.
But for that to happen, the wedding invites actually have to make it to guests.
That hasn’t been the case for Gillian Shea, who says the USPS lost 82 of the 85 invitations she mailed back in August from the Roslindale Post Office. She even made sure to have them weighed prior to mailing to make sure she applied the correct postage.
“The fact that they just seemed to have vanished into thin air is pretty frustrating,” Shea said. “It’ll make for a fun story, I guess. But right now, it doesn’t feel so fun.”
Shea says she and her fiancée spent about $500 on the missing invitations and then had to spend more money to send an electronic invitation.
There’s no pattern for the three that actually made it through the mail. One was delivered locally to Scituate, Massachusetts, another turned up on Long Island, and the third was delivered in Upstate New York.
Shea filed a claim for one of the missing invites, but it hasn’t turned up anything. A Postal Service spokesperson told NewsCenter 5 that there’s no mechanism to track first-class mail like this.
“The overall answer was ‘We have no idea,’” Shea said she was told. “’Your guess is as good as ours.’”
Shea’s story raises questions about whether the Postal Service has mailed it in when it comes to improving reliability post-pandemic. Delivery delays increased dramatically during 2020, which Postmaster General Louis DeJoy blamed at the time on COVID-19-related absences. But reliability is still not back to what it was before the pandemic.
“A substantial portion of our delays are related to COVID,” DeJoy told Congress in the summer of 2020. “We’re short 200 carriers, and this can go on for a while.”
First-class mail dropped from approximately 95 percent on-time delivery before the pandemic to 82% after the nation shut down in 2020. It has rebounded, but the most recent figures show it’s only 91% — meaning about one piece of mail out of every 10 is at least delayed. The Postal Service missed its own goal this past year of reaching 92.5% on time.
As for Shea, she’s holding on tight to the last copy she has of her wedding invitation.
“We’re going to keep it for a whole memento of what never happened, I guess,” she said.
Engagement photos for this story were provided by K. Engel Photography.