LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Over the past week, LEX 18 has received several reports of people experiencing mail delays. As road conditions in the area have improved, mail carriers with the U.S. Postal Service are getting back to a normal delivery schedule.
But some Kentuckians still have stories of prolonged delivery delays and are facing growing frustration as they wait for delivery.
“It’s actually a check from a lawyer that I’m waiting on,” one woman said after walking out of the USPS facility on Nandino Blvd. “It was mailed Dec. 27 from Florida, and I’ve been checking the tracking, and it says it hasn’t moved from here since the sixth. When I went in there she says it was last scanned here on the second of January.”
One Harrodsburg man, Don Engler, is an artist who is a frequent customer of the postal service.
“A lot of his art, we just sell prints,” said Don’s wife Shelli. “Some companies buy the rights to them for puzzles or for calendars, notecards, things of that nature.”
Shelli is the business manager for Don Engler Art, and she is one of the many Kentuckians with stories of delivery delays.
“It's like a black hole. Everything's getting sucked into the facility in Lexington,” she said. “I had packages that were going to Lexington from Harrodsburg, and it took almost three weeks for it to be delivered. I could have walked from Harrodsburg and hand delivered it to the address.”
Shelli shared of another delivery to Alabama that went awry. After an initial package was sent out Dec. 9, Shelli learned it had not arrived. She sent a second package on Dec. 30 and went to file a service request for it after further delays.
“I found out that the first package that I mailed on Dec. 9 was finally delivered in Alabama on Jan. 15. Looking at the tracking history on the USPS website, it was showing that it sat in Lexington for a month.”
We reached out to the postal service to ask what is causing delays in service here in the bluegrass and received this statement from a spokesperson:
“Fortunately, improved conditions across the area are allowing for the safe delivery of mail and packages. Our carriers are working each day and attempting to access mailboxes.”
“This was before all the snow and stuff hit, and they were sent priority mail,” Shelli said of her delivery issues. “It’s been so, so frustrating for us as a small business owner. We cannot afford to charge $30-$45 for FedEx or UPS shipping when our product only costs $30-$45.”
“I hate to say you get what you pay for, but we’ve gotten the shaft.”
