SAN ANTONIO — Jason Mercado checked his mail one morning to find 20 different letters in his post box. Unfortunately, 19 of those letters were obviously meant for his neighbors. Mercado wasn't happy.
"It was really shocking to me," Mercado said. "There was one letter addressed to us and everything else was to different addresses. Eighteen addresses. That doesn't just happen."
The homeowner then started checking with other neighbors on his community Facebook page and found out it wasn't just him. He found several community members having the same problem that week. He also found nearly a hundred different Facebook complaints about the post office over the last two years including videos of mail being mishandled.
"You start seeing all these neighbors. One lady received 18 packages and another received six," Mercado said. "It's not just me. There is something going on."
He said some neighbors were also missing packages and even medications that were supposed to be delivered through the U.S. Postal Service. Finally, he called KENS 5.
"We just want to bring this to light and get some sort of resolution to this problem," Mercado said.
When KENS 5 arrived at the neighborhood, we found a postal worker delivering mail to the cluster mailbox nearby. The postal worker told KENS 5 he also found mail in the wrong boxes and one package was supposed to be sent to a completely different street.
The postal employee then had to spend extra time sorting out those mistakes before moving on with his route.
KENS 5 contacted the U.S. Postal Service the next day and asked what was being done to address these mistakes. We also sent USPS a video of one of their postal workers carelessly fumbling a package onto a local porch. The U.S. Postal Service sent the following statement several days later:
“In this instance, local management is fully aware of the concerns of customers in the Falcon Landing neighborhood. We are taking immediate steps to ensure timely and accurate mail delivery service. The leadership team in the San Antonio area will continue to monitor conditions on a daily basis and make any needed adjustments in order to maintain the highest quality service. We apologize for any inconvenience experienced by our customers, and we thank them for their patience as we work to swiftly resolve this matter.
Regarding the actions seen in the video, this is clearly unacceptable behavior that does not reflect the efforts of the thousands of professional, dedicated carriers in our workforce. However, due to privacy issues, the Postal Service does not comment publicly on personnel matters.”
While USPS refused to tell KENS 5 if they would make any changes to the postal workers on the route, a USPS manager did respond to a local homeowner who complained about the same thing.
USPS told that homeowner via email, "The Postal Service is aware of the frustration and disappointment caused when we do not live up to our commitment of safe and reliable mail service. We are aware of the situation that this individual has caused on your route as well as other routes. This individual no longer is employed with us, and we will place a senior carrier on the route to prevent mis-deliveries as much as possible."
Mercado said he hopes the extra attention improves mail delivery in the future but he will let KENS 5 know if the mistakes continue.
"I feel more positive now that KENS 5 has gotten involved. We were grasping at straws trying to get traction, somebody to acknowledge that there is a problem, and get them to rectify the problem," Mercado said. "Hopefully they will take action. To me, it's an issue that should have been worked on a long time ago."
KENS 5 will follow up with the community to make sure the mistakes have been corrected.
If you have a problem like this, we want to help you fix it! In our series, Call KENS, we do our best to solve problems for our viewers. The number to call is 210-470-KENS.