PostalReporter.com Blog

 According to KY3-TV in Springfield. MO:

Some of your mail may have disappeared — not at the hands of thieves but at the hands of law enforcement. Since 1994, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has destroyed more than 20 million pieces of mail, a practice that continues. The service hopes it’s protecting people from getting scammed.

“We’ve been working with Customs to seize suspicious letters coming through borders to the United States mail stream,” said Postal Inspector Dan Taylor.

It’s all in an effort to protect people from foreign lottery scams aimed at stealing thousands of dollars.

“It’s always a scam; there is no legitimate foreign lottery that can be played in the United States,” said Taylor.

The typical scam involves a notification letter that someone has won a contest or lottery and a check with the winnings. The scammers ask the receiver to deposit the check and then send back a portion of it for taxes and other fees. Of course, the check turns out to be a fake.

“They have access to funds. They send money off and, two to three weeks later, the bank calls and says you owe us money you withdrew out of your account,” said Taylor.

The Postal Inspection Service estimates victims of foreign lottery scams lose $120 million a year. Taylor says the largest single loss that he investigated was $500,000.

“A lot of people would say this can’t happen to me but they don’t understand that these people find out what motivates you and that’s what they target when they talk to you,” he said.

Since the scams originate out of the country, the con artists are difficult if not impossible to catch, which is why the Postal Inspection Service says prevention, through the seizing of letters and education of consumers, is key.

It’s illegal for U.S. citizens to participate in foreign lotteries so, even if one of the letters is for real, you’d actually be breaking the law by participating.

See video

Scammers used Postal Service change of address forms to redirect stars mail

Investigators busted a massive identity theft ring allegedly operating out of a row home in Northeast Philadelphia Friday.

The scammers used the postal service change of address forms to redirect stars mail to their North Philadelphia home. Authorities said the pair allegedly used change of address forms to have their victims’ mail delivered to their home and used the personal information they obtained to create phony checks and credit cards.

Police said the list of targeted victims includes celebrity names like Donovan McNabb, his mother Wilma, Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, Whitney Houston, Patti LaBelle, Michael Vick and Microsoft founder Paul Allen.

Watch video from KYW-TV

From PostalReporter.com reader:

The Postal Service continues to implement Phase 2 of the National Reassessment Process (NRP) in USPS Districts across the country. There is no set schedule that establishes a date when a particular District will begin Phase 2.

Every USPS District should have already implemented Phase 1 of the NRP, which is the “information-gathering” phase. When a District completes this initial phase, they contact Postal Service Headquarters to seek approval to move forward into Phase 2, which is the “interview and decision-making phase.”

If USPS Headquarters agrees that a District has successfully completed all of the requirements of Phase 1, they will validate the completion of Phase 1 and authorize that District to begin the implementation of Phase 2. The Postal Service will then notify the APWU national office that Phase 2 implementation has been approved for that District.

The Postal Service has informed the APWU that they do not expect more than three Districts in a USPS Area to be in Phase 2 of the NRP at the same time.

USPS Districts that have been approved for the implementation of Phase 2:

USPS District                  Date of Implementation
 
Dakotas                           Mar. 08, 2007
 
New Hampshire/Vermont   Mar. 13, 2007
 
Westchester                    Late April, 2007
 
Salt Lake City                  Late April, 2007
 
San Diego                       Mid-May, 2007
(offices not in NRP pilot)
 
South Georgia                 Mid-May, 2007
 
Mid-America                   May 24, 2007
 
Boston                           Jun. 28, 2007
 
Caribbean                      Jul. 09, 2007
 
Honolulu                        Jul. 09, 2007
 
Cincinnati                      Aug. 01, 2007  

Related link: More “Injured on Duty” articles 

USPS notified APWU on August 2, 2007 of its intent to  remove all stamp vending machines within the Western Area by September 2008. The removal of the stamp vending machines will impact Clerk and Maintenance craft employees who service the machines.

In October 2006 USPS announced that “A program scheduled to begin in 2007 will phase out stamp vending machines from Post Offices and offsite locations across the country by 2010. Approximately 5,900 vending machines will be removed each year until the nearly 23,000 machines now in service have been withdrawn. USPS points to reasons such as aging equipment, lack of repair parts and the high cost of specialized vending stock for removing the machines from service. Dissatisfaction with dollar coins in change, machine malfunctions and failure to accept credit and debit cards also helped make the machines customer service “has-beens.”

The Western Area encompasses the states of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, the western and southern portions of Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, western Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Text of letter below:

Omar M. Gonzalez
Western Regional Coordinator
APWU, AFL-CIO
1799 Old Bay Shore Hwy, Ste 240
Burlingame, CA 94010-1377

Sharyn M. Stone
Regional Coordinator APWU
Central Region
330 S. Wells St., Ste 800
Chicago, IL 60606-7110

Re: Removal of Stamp Vending Machines

Dear Union Officers:

This is a courtesy notice that we are planning to remove all stamp vending machines within the Western Area by September 2008. There are several reasons for this business decision including: customers are buying fewer stamps from the machines and are choosing alternative channels; only 7% of customers claim that vending machines are their primary source of stamps; revenue from vending machines has decreased 35% from 2001 to 2005; some machines are only used by one or two customers per month and only garner $25; many of the machines are old and are no longer serviceable; the U.S. Treasury Department has changed the $5, $10, and $20 bills to address counterfeiting and the machines lack appropriate bill validators; and consequently it is not cost effective to maintain and upgrade the machines in light of decreased revenue.

The removal of the stamp vending machines will impact clerk and maintenance employees who service the machines. We believe that impacts will be minimal and we do not anticipate excessing outside of the installation or craft. Each District Office will therefore handle their Article 12 notices.

If you have any questions please contact Dan L Foster at 303-313-5702.

Sincerely,
Valerie E. Martin
Manager Human Resources
Western Area
1745 Stout St., Ste 600
Denver, CO 80299-4000
(303) 391-5020
FAX: 391-5021

**some portions of the letter removed by PostalReporter.com

 According to a notice posted on Federal Business Opportunies website:

The United States Postal Service is seeking information on beginning a Priority Mail Service Care Package program that would allow customers to send selected items to military personnel, college students, campers, the elderly, and others.  

These Care Packages will be supplied, packed, and shipped by interested companies, and target marketed to military personnel, students, campers, and their families via the U.S. Postal Service  web site (www.usps.com).     

The Priority Mail Service Care Package program is a way in which customers, through specific custom linkage to USPS.com, may find links to businesses that will fulfill and ship an assortment of items to whomever the customer chooses.  The customer would have an al a carte selection of items to choose from, and need only give the recipient address information and payment for all services in return for having these items shipped to a location they specify.  These packages would then be sent only through the US Postal Service.

According to the Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service is asking for the cooperation of its unions in holding down costs if it is to avoid contracting out work, Postmaster General John Potter said last week.“The only way we’re going to be successful … is to have all 700,000 people in the Postal Service begin to focus on revenue,” Potter said at a July 19 hearing on postal outsourcing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on the Postal Service. Potter said he needed union help to improve service, reduce costs and increase revenue, suggesting lack of help on those issues would necessitate more outsourcing, though he echoed past pledges not to outsource existing postal jobs. While postal unions and some congressional Democrats remain opposed to almost any outsourcing, Potter said postal managers, when asked to cut costs, need the discretion to outsource functions.

http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2941945

APWU News

In a rush to redesign its nationwide network of facilities, the Postal Service acted on several misguided and poorly rationalized assumptions, a Postal Regulatory Commission official told Congress in late July.

In testimony before a House of Representatives subcommittee, John D. Wailer also cited a lack of consistency in how proposed consolidations are reviewed; a failure to develop criteria for approval or disapproval of proposed consolidations; a failure to seek public input; and “severe tardiness and errors in analysis in post-consolidation reviews.”

Commenting on Wailer’s statement, APWU President William Burrus said, “This testimony confirms our members’ criticism of the USPS plan for network realignment. It echoes and reinforces our fundamental objections.”

Wailer testified, “The Postal Service recognized that its network redesign program could have a significant impact on service.” However, he said, USPS planners failed to properly consider service implications while making the assessments that are the foundation for the Evolutionary Network Design (END) program:

• The Postal Service failed to provide a reliable estimate of the volume of mail that would experience a downgrade (or upgrade) in the number of days delivery would take;
• There was no estimate of how often the Postal Service would need to move up collection times; and
• There was no consideration of whether consolidations would result in mail being delivered later in the day.

Another basic flaw in the END program, Wailer said, “was the determination to consolidate operations, where possible, from smaller plants into larger plants, rather than from less productive plants into more productive plants.”

Full Story

http://apwu.org/news/webart/2007/webart-0774-consol-prctestimony-070802.htm

 check out the postal news below for August 02, 2007 :

Postmaster accused of discarding mail

(Ohio) 133 pieces in trash were undeliverable, she said -After a substitute postmaster took over last winter, some people in Harrisburg began to notice that they weren’t getting all their mail. Federal agents say it’s because she was throwing it away, and now she’s in trouble with the U.S. government. Elizabeth T. Simonian, 49, is accused in federal court of pitching mail into the trash at the post office in May. Some of her customers say she was fed up with the way the mail was addressed. Simonian told postal agents she threw away only mail that was not deliverable or that had been left at the post office with no forwarding address. comments

NALC Postal Record: Contract accord features wage hikes, job protections (PDF)

Postal Bulletin 8/02/07 Issue
Service standards workgroup to make recommendations to USPS

Ex-postal worker on probation for failing to deliver mail
Teen arrested in letter carrier shooting
Stake in safety has earned steak for postal workers

Residents must move mailboxes to ground level

Norwich residents upset post office telling them to move mailboxes
Catalogers turn to postcards

Mailbox bombs rattle a Washington County borough
Postal Carrier held at gun point | Man attempts to rob postal worker
Clifton marks anniversary of rural mail route

Flickr Photos 

133 pieces in trash were undeliverable

(Harrisburg, Ohio) After a substitute postmaster took over last winter, some people in Harrisburg began to notice that they weren’t getting all their mail. Federal agents say it’s because she was throwing it away, and now she’s in trouble with the U.S. government.

Elizabeth T. Simonian, 49, is accused in federal court of pitching mail into the trash at the post office in May. Some of her customers say she was fed up with the way the mail was addressed.

Simonian told postal agents she threw away only mail that was not deliverable or that had been left at the post office with no forwarding address.

Full Story