UPDATE-We received mail the one day.  The next day the USPS took the box out of service again.  Unfortunately Supervisor of Customer Service Patricia Burton is off today, (see never called back) and Customer Service Supervisor Javier is in today and has yet returned a call either, left a message with someone there who answered.  By the way, NONE of them have voicemail.  What does that tell you.

At the time of the publishing of this article, it would have been day 80 (not counting Sundays) that the Mitchell Court 12 have not had a mail delivery.  Our cluster mailbox that served this community faithfully since 1984 was vandalized on June 6 and it has remained unrepaired since.  (You can get caught up on the previous doings by reading USPS Killer Customer Service is Killing the Message.) However we finally got mail yesterday, September 9th after the Post office received much pressure from our Congressman and angry public.  It turns out there are several vandalized unrepaired mailboxes throughout Vallejo.  What is disappointing is the USPS lied.  After making us wait for 79 days for a new mailbox, that’s what they kept saying was taking so long, they just did a simple repair on the old mailbox to get everyone off their back.  It was like being told you’ll get a new smartphone to replace your broken one and just given back the same phone with duck tape holding it together.  So why did the USPS take so long to get it together?  Why did it take 3 months for this fix?  I guess we’ll never know since there has been no communication from the USPS at all so we’re left to make up our own scenarios.  The few tidbits they have given us were lies just to make us go away and stop interrupting their siestas.  How can there be trust when a organization lies to the face of the public?

The main problem as with most dysfunctional corporations is their lack of leadership and with the current incompetent management at the helm there is no way the USPS 94589 will ever be able to resolve their profit making issues let alone find ways to improve their service levels because they’re happy with giving below par service.  Except in the area of express mail, they have no competition to cause them to give good service, so their attitude remains, too bad.  It begins with their current leader Mr. Sam Jones who does not return phone calls or initiated any conversation with the public as to a expected completion date to have the mailbox repaired.  In fact Mr. Jones didn’t return phone calls from Congressman Thompson’s office either.  He has no concept that just a simple sorry and we’ll fix it by this date could have avoided the animosity from the people of this town.  He could have come himself or sent a customer service representative to the neighborhood to demonstrate in any way that they cared about what was going on and what they were going to do.  In fact Mr. Jones has been so successful in teaching his ways, that all his supervisors don’t return phone calls either but will tell you to your face they will follow up like Supervisor of Customer Service Patricia Burton.

The USPS spent $126 million for culture change and leadership to Campbell Ewald in FY 2011 and another $125 million to Accenture for management consulting and technology.  Either the Post Office was ripped off or their leadership just plain refuses to change.  They still talk down to customers, have very poor communications skills and when it’s time to think out side the box are as lost as a sightless person in a dark movie theatre.  They insist they can’t make improvements unless Congress gives them permission to do so, but based on their lack of abilities so far to improve with what they can control, I say Congress is very astute this time  not to turn it over to them.  How can you trust an organization to turn itself around when they don’t demonstrate the competence in what they’re doing now?  The best solution is just abolish the organization and turn it over to private enterprise with real leaders and real managers who care and understand service.

My free advice to the USPS to save money on leadership development and other customer service related training.  I have three blogs for you that are FREE and strongly recommend that you actually read them.  1- http://cranstonholden.com/   2- . http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/ and 3-http://www.squawkpoint.com/     Have you had similar service issues with the USPS?  Please share here or privately in an email.  Thanks.