Editor:
The Encampment post office is a small post office, which serves 500 people (at the most) in the two communities of Encampment and Riverside. We don’t have mail delivery to our homes and must have our mail come to a post office box. I’m writing this letter out of frustration with our new postmaster here at the Encampment post office. The postmaster has begun sending letters and packages back when they don’t meet his addressing requirements. Letters and packages addressed to our physical addresses are no longer being placed in our post office box. He says he doesn’t know all the people’s box numbers, but with all the new information we had to produce when we last paid our post office box rent, I find that hard to believe that information is not handy. I know he has much discretion on this issue, as when he had instructed me on how letters are to be addressed, he had no solution for us whose address also includes Riverside-a town without our own post office nor included officially on the name of the Encampment post office, yet we receive mail at the Encampment post office. Returning mail has caused not only much frustration for the customers as well as the shippers, but has cost also money and possible health! I know of instances where senior’s mail order medicines have been shipped back because it did not meet the postmaster’s addressing criteria. He sent back our cable bill, causing us to be charged a late payment on a bill we never received. We have made a complaint about the current situation to the postal service, but no response has been received. He states that this post office policy has always been in place, and he is just enforcing what all the other postmasters should have been doing for the last 20 years. If this is the case, why weren’t these previous postmasters encouraged to make these addressing changes all along by their supervisors? The difference is we had postmasters who were part of our community and who cared about the citizens who live here. Our previous postmasters delivered great customer service in completing our mail delivery sprinkled with a good dose of common sense. It’s too bad the postal administration did not choose to hire a postmaster who was already part of this community and cared about its people.
Lee Ann Stephenson
Riverside, WY
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