Amazon is delivering. UPS is delivering. FedEx is delivering. Yet, the United States Post Office still refuses to deliver mail to residents of Fort Myers Beach. Why?
Fort Myers Beach Vice Mayor Jim Atterholt has worked every angle available to him to try to get the Postal Service to take action. At every turn it’s political speak, excuses and ‘we’re doing everything we can.’
High ranking politicians, such as Senator Rick Scott, have even gone on social media to take credit for fixing the situation. What’s comical about Scott’s tweet is there might be voters out there who actually believe he did something to fix the situation. Yet, here you are, over 90 days later, still traveling nearly 20 miles to get your mail while private companies like Amazon, UPS and FedEx have figured it out. Not to mention there’s not a single place on Fort Myers Beach you can even mail a letter. How hard is it to put a big blue United States post office drop box somewhere and have a carrier comes once a day to pickup outgoing mail? Apparently very, very hard.
When we asked for an update on restoring postal delivery service on Fort Myers Beach, here’s what we received from the Corporate Communications office. “We have no updates to report at this time. However, I’ll be counting on you to help share information with the public when an update is available.”
While anything the Post Office says should be taken with a grain of salt at this point, the latest proposed solution is to put two trailers in the post office parking lot while the building they were leasing is repaired. Atterholt says that plan is now mired down with permitting issues. Not permitting issues from the town, permits to get the trailers delivered from wherever they’re coming from. Translation: government red tape.
Watch our video tour of the damaged Fort Myers Beach post office HERE
Check out this Post Office experience from a resident of Fort Myers Beach:
“I went to the post office to pick up my mail on January 3rd. I was handed a couple of letters and told that was all I had. I told the clerk that I definitely had a lot more mail as indicated in my Informed Delivery. She told me that Informed Delivery is always wrong and basically walked away and ignored my pleas for her to take a look. One of the items in the mail had a tracking number and was very important. She didn’t come back so I tried to ask the Sanibel desk clerk to take another look, but was told she couldn’t help me since I was at the FMB desk. I waited a bit and another FMB clerk came to the desk. I asked him to look for at least my package, if not all the other mail that should have been there. Since I had a tracking number on one item, he thought that that item could definitely be found. He disappeared for a while, and then came back with my package and ALL of my other missing mail. Why couldn’t the first person see this other mail and why couldn’t they have looked a bit harder? I’m sure others have experienced this. I saw a couple other people in there that day that she had told they had no mail and turned them away. In the future, I would definitely question that based on my experience. I had a LOT more mail if she would have only looked. It is bad enough that we have to drive 30 to 45 minutes just to get our mail. I can’t believe the level of service is this horrible.
That is just my most recent experience, but it is similar to most other times I have been to JetPort Loop. On November 28th, I typed up all my concerns about this mail situation and sent it to customer support on USPS.com. In that note, I included how long it takes to get there, unacceptable clerk attitudes and help when there, and missing mail. I also pointed out that it is possible to use personal vehicles for delivery. That is done daily at my northern home. I was just sending feedback and suggestions about what they could do to fix the problems facing Fort Myers Beach and their post office.
On December 28th I received a reply email from USPS. It says “Resolved.” It offers no detail or any indication of how it was resolved. Obviously, nothing has been resolved! That reply was actually pretty comical! I attached a picture of that email that says absolutely nothing!”
Keep the pressure on by sending letters to Congressman Byron Donalds HERE and Senator Rick Scott HERE.
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