Hi Everybody

There doesn't seem to be much left to do within the post office bureaucracy itself. I just called Michelle at consumer affairs (after not bothering her for 2 weeks) and she remembered me and told me to stop calling. She repeated what she said before which is that this case is being handled by the inspector general and I will not be able to get any information about it by calling consumer affairs or the office of the inspector general. She said I will probably never hear anything about this case even if it is "resolved". So I guess that's that!

Just to make sure I've covered all my bases, I submitted the following summary to Mike Doyle's website [ https://doyle.house.gov/contact-me/email-me ] and I e-mailed a copy to Deb Gross as well. If anybody else wants to submit a similar complaint to these offices, it probably wouldn't hurt. This is what I wrote:
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I live in the Highland Park neighborhood and we are served by the East Liberty branch of the post office. Back in December myself and at least 30 other neighbors did not receive mail for 3 days and that mail was never delivered. Many people lost important mail, including bills, checks and invoices, not to mention hundreds of Christmas cards. Upon e-mailing and speaking to several of my neighbors, it appears that on those days the packages and parcels were sorted out and delivered but all other mail was returned to the senders as non-deliverable. I can confirm that this happened to me as well.

I have spoken to people at the East Liberty post office, at the Pittsburgh office of consumer affairs and at the office of the Inspector General. I have filed official complaints with all those offices. I have attempted to follow up with those offices regarding this case but at this point the general response is "we're working on it, stop calling". While it seems unlikely that we will ever receive the missing mail, I am writing so that this misconduct will be documented to hopefully prevent further instances of this type of problem. I'm hoping your office can apply some sort of pressure to improve the service from the East Liberty branch of the Post Office and ideally get an official response regarding this incident. 

Please contact me with any questions or to discuss this matter further.
-Todd Shirley

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On Dec 31, 2013, at 12:08 PM, Todd Shirley <todd@shirbert.com> wrote:

No results yet on the missing mail. I called consumer affairs (412-359-7845) again to follow up and once I explained the situation to Michelle, she said "Are you part of that group of Highland Park residents who have been e-mailing each other about lost mail?" She said that the case had been referred to the inspector general. She assured me that it was now a criminal investigation, but we wouldn't be able to find out about the progress of that case until they were done. She said they might contact some of us for more details, but that they won't comment on cases in progress.

I called the inspector general's office (1-888-877-7644) and the woman there did confirm that there were a number of open cases out of the East Liberty PO, but that's all she could say. She encouraged me to fill out an official online complaint because "there is strength in numbers". If you haven't already filed a complaint, I encourage you to do so at: http://uspsoig.gov/form/new-complaint-form

Please let me know if you have made better progress or recovered any of your missing mail.

-Todd Shirley

On Dec 24, 2013, at 1:39 PM, Todd Shirley <todd@shirbert.com> wrote:

Following up on yesterday's e-mail. I called the East Liberty PO back twice around 5pm yesterday, got put on hold and eventually disconnected both times. I went in this morning at 9am and talked to a few people but all they could say was that there was no mail there and all mail was being delivered. I reported that lots of people in my neighborhood were missing mail and I needed to file an official complaint but they had no forms or idea how I would do that. Mail was delivered today but once again only a few pieces and no sign of the approximately 20-30 pieces of missing mail that I didn't receive last week.

Got a call back from Tommy Piergerossi at the East Liberty PO and he swore up and down that all mail had been/was being delivered. Once again I tried to file a formal complaint because there is still lots of mail missing. He gave me the phone number for the Postal Inspector (877-876-2455). I spoke to a Joe Monzo at the inspectors office and he said they could only handle criminal complaints and I couldn't file that unless I had already filed a complaint with consumer affairs at 1-800-275-8777. Of course this is the 1-800 number i have called countless times and never been able to get through to a live person or file a complaint. I told him this but he said I had to try again. I have now been on hold with that number for over an hour...

OMG somebody finally picked up. I filed an official complaint. When I told him lots of people in my neighborhood had the same problem, he said I should call my local consumer affairs office. I told him I thought I had called consumer affairs, he said no, this is customer CARE. He then gave me the following number which he said you should all call to file an official complaint. This is the number that I encourage all of you to call: 412-359-7845. I have currently been on hold with them for about 5 minutes. I'm going to take a break from my new hobby so I can enjoy the holiday, but I'll write again on the 26th with any updates.