HOUSTON — The USPS Office of Inspector General shared a November 2023 report with KHOU 11 News that shows they were already looking into issues at the north Houston facility, which is where viewers have shared that their packages have been stuck for weeks on end, even before the reports were widely reported.
In the report, they found issues with clearance times, late and canceled trips, and packages not being scanned according to their rules -- to list a few.
The report shows pictures of potentially delayed mail from September with numbers of delayed parcels of over 45,000 in just three days.
The report stated the mail was not labeled so they couldn’t determine how much was delayed.
The report has recommendations for what can be done to improve efficiency and under each one there is a management response and action plan as well as a target implementation date which majority are set for February of this year.
Management agreed with some of the recommendations, but not all of them.
While the report is from November 2023, KHOU 11 News has received pictures of what the loading dock area of the north Houston facility on Aldine Bender looked like earlier this month.
Small business owners said they're frustrated with USPS and are considering switching to UPS or FedEx to make sure their business doesn’t deal with the delays anymore.
“It took 21 days to get to my house and it impacted my business because it's something I’m going to sell for next month and it’s delayed,” small business owner Nancy Cornejo said. “And it's not the first time. It's been like two or three times that it happened.”
Other Houston-area residents who haven't been impacted by the delays said they're now concerned as they wait for important paperwork in the mail -- like bills -- and they're simply concerned about the mail service going forward.
“Because you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know if they don't get better, or if they're going to get worse with your mail. And we don't want that. We want to get our mail on time,” Caroline Loftis said.
KHOU 11 News continues pressing for answers and working to get interviews with mail officials.
Are you having issues with the post office? Send an email to mailproblems@khou.com and let us know. You can see our coverage of delays at Houston-area USPS processing centers on KHOU.com/PostalProblems.