Mail delivered 'every day'? What junk. CASEY: Declaration mail's delivered daily to every Va. address 'totally ludicrous,' readers say They're missing health-insurance bills, Certified Mail and more. One Salem lawyer said it takes nearly two weeks for a letter mailed from his law office to make it to the Roanoke County Courthouse – which is across the street and barely 100 yards away.

Last week we learned about a tantalizing statement made in a recent letter to Sen. Tim Kaine by a U.S. Postal Service official in Washington, D.C.

The official was Scott R. Slusher, director of the Postal Service Government Liaison office. The senator wrote him in May regarding complaints Kaine's office had fielded from all over Virginia, about missed mail deliveries.

Slusher wrote back June 28 and declared postal operations in Virginia are "adequately staffed" and "our carriers in Virginia reach every street address every day."

That was shocking news to many residents of Roanoke and Roanoke County, who've been telling me exactly the opposite for months. And they quickly disputed Slusher's statements in phone calls and emails to yours truly.

Some of them say they're getting mail only three or four days per week, despite a federal law that mandates deliveries six days per week.

One of them was A. Vass, an elderly resident of south Roanoke, who was quoted in Thursday's column's about mail that had been missing for a week.

"How can the Slusher guy tell such a lie as 'our carriers in Virginia reach every street address every day?' Vass wrote the day the column appeared.

"This week alone - unless I get mail today - it will be 7 days since a carrier came to my house. If I had not intercepted one on Tuesday, I would have had no mail for at least 7 days and counting.

"He acts as if they have full staffs. When they call to give excuses for themselves all they moan about is how short-staffed they are and they can't hire or retain employees."

Vass was hardly the only one who labeled Slusher's statement imaginative fiction. Another is Barbara Dyer, a retired teacher who lives in the Penn Forest area.

"After reading your column this morning, I'd like to report that our mail was not picked up [Wednesday]," she said in a voicemail. "It's totally ludicrous that mail is delivered promptly and everything's OK. That's definitely not true."

2 weeks to travel 100 yards?

Harry Bosen Jr., a Salem lawyer, called Slusher's statement "putrid and disingenuous" and "absurd and devoid of reality."

"I can mail a letter to the Roanoke County Courthouse across the street from my Law Office in Salem and it will take 10 days to 2 weeks to get delivered most of the time," Bosen wrote in an email.

"The mailing I send first goes to Greensboro then apparently takes a detour to Alaska or other environs before it gets routed to the Courthouse, which is less than 100 yards [from] my front door," Bosen noted. His problems aren't merely with outgoing mail, he added.

"I receive bills that are due days before the bills are even delivered to my P.O. Box in Salem with postmarks well before the delivery. Then, I have to deal with late fees and spend valuable time getting these fees removed from my accounts.

"My wife's health insurance was actually canceled because I did not even get a bill in the mail at all for June this year, and I received a notice of delinquency, whereupon I immediately mailed a check, that the insurance company did not receive until 5 days after the deadline, which was 10 full days from the date I mailed the check, thereby causing a cancellation and causing me to have to spend more valuable time and effort to get the policy reinstated.

"This absurd lack of service by a heretofore reliable agency is not the fault of Postal Service workers, but is all the fault of the current head of the USPS, Louis DeJoy," Bosen continued.

DeJoy, Bosen added, "was appointed by Trump to destroy the USPS so we the people will scream for dismantling of the USPS and agree with the Republicans for privatization, which is the goal of the Republicans in Congress and of Mr. DeJoy himself."

Newspaper canceled

Fred Lawson of southeast Roanoke wrote that "the mail service that we have on Gordon Avenue is so bad you would think we live in a third-world country. Our mail usually arrives at 8 p.m. or later.

"I keep my life simple," Lawson added in his email. "I have the same bills as most families do; trouble is some of my bills have taken two to three weeks to arrive. The night the bill arrives I write the check and take it to Vinton Post Office. Guess what? I had my Roanoke Times canceled for no payment. Three weeks went by before they got the check.

"I believe in the Postal Service, but something is very wrong with a system that has your customers and employees outside in the dark after 8 p.m. in the winter time, with a flashlight looking for their mail and/or mailboxes. How safe is that?" he asked.

Sandra Woodford of Roanoke County wrote:

"I was amused by the response from the Postal Service rep, this morning, since our street (in the Cave Spring area) got no mail yesterday! One day recently, I received mail for three addresses, in addition to my own mail - not one was in our area! However, on a positive note, mail delivery is often three days a week now, rather than two."

Bill Sweet, who lives in the Center Hill neighborhood of Raleigh Court, said his mail delivery has been mostly reliable since the winter holidays, when it was terrible.

But "just last week one day I did not get any mail," Sweet added. "The postal employee told me the next day that she took a day off and came back [the following day] to deliver 2 days of mail. The postal manager told me earlier in the year that they are short-staffed.

"My carrier told me their priority is the delivery of Amazon packages on time. I see a postal truck run by my house each morning and afternoon full of packages. I asked her how many new employees and new trucks did they get to meet the requirements of the Amazon contract? She said none," Sweet wrote.

Bill Haynie, who lives in the same neighborhood, wrote me an email Monday just before 5 p.m.

"I have not received any mail since last Wednesday. I'm just wondering where the nitwit USPS bureaucrat that you quoted recently obtained [the] 95+% delivery rate got the numbers, because it ain't happening in Roanoke, and I'm not alone," Hayne wrote.

Defund the post office?

Bruce Mann, who also lives in Raleigh Court, inquired at the Grandin Road Post Office "about losing my mail and not receiving mail and [a postal worker] admitted outright they don't have the carriers and blamed it on 'nobody wants to work.'

Charles Reynolds of Roanoke said he mailed a certified letter to his 27-year-old granddaughter in Rincon, Georgia, near the end of April. When it wasn't delivered timely, he called a Postal Service help line. A worker there found the letter, hung up at a distribution center in Greensboro.

The letter, which cost Reynolds $14 or more to mail, made it after nine days in transit, he said.

Last but not least I heard from Wayne Ward, who lives in southern Roanoke County.

"I have been having the same problem with my mail delivery for months now. I missed last Friday's mail; I've been missing one of two days most weeks since the beginning of the year," Ward wrote. "And now they've just raised the price of mail delivery.

"Is there some way that we can defund the post office, for not doing their job? They are a monopoly. We have no other way of getting First-Class Mail delivered. And with all these problems, we have no recourse."

Dan Casey (540) [email protected]@dancaseysblog