Eagle River residents report unusually long mail delays, mishandled packages, hours spent in line

At Eagle River’s post office, even longtime customers say they’ve never seen anything like the uncommonly long mail and package delivery times and lengthy lines they’ve experienced through December.

Late Thursday morning, a few days before New Year’s weekend, the Eagle River Post Office was bustling with people. The parking lot was nearly full. Some of the customers were there to pick up Christmas presents that arrived late, or that they just couldn’t pick up because pre-holiday lines were so long.

At least 30 people waited in a line that stretched half the length of the building. One man near the front said he’d been waiting for over an hour. But, he said, this wasn’t that bad compared to recent days and weeks.

United States Postal Service spokesman David Rupert said this week that the holiday season is an exceptionally challenging time of the year for post offices all over the country, and that he hadn’t heard of any unique problems at Eagle River’s post office in particular.

“This was our busiest month of our busiest time of year,” Rupert said. “We’re short everywhere, but it may be particularly acute (in Eagle River).”

The heavy snowfall that Anchorage and surrounding areas received in December was also likely a contributing factor, he said. “When that hits during this busiest time, you’re always playing catch up. You don’t get ahead of it until you get a little breathing room.”

[Snow and unplowed roads forced many Anchorage stores to temporarily close, harming sales during holiday peak]

Longtime Eagle River resident Susan Udevitz, who has lived in the same home for 33 years, said she had never experienced such chaos with the local post office, which she detailed in a lengthy email and later by phone. Udevitz said the delays seemed to begin before the major storms.

She said it started in late November, when a package marked as “out for delivery” didn’t arrive until eight days later. That same week, she received a delivery notice for a package that had not, in fact, been delivered.

Her neighbor experienced a similar problem — she told Udevitz she received a notice of “attempted delivery,” but she’d been home all day and evening and she hadn’t received a knock or a package slip.

“It’s never been like this in Eagle River. Ever,” Udevitz said.

Udevitz has visited the post office multiple times over the past few weeks — four times in one week — to try to get to the bottom of missing packages and other issues.

While there, she said a mail clerk told her that they could barely get through the door that day because of dozens of pallets of Amazon packages in particular, and that staff were working late into the night sorting packages.

“I will say almost everyone that I’ve spoken to with these missing packages, they have been friendly and they’ve been polite,” she said. “And I think they’re just overwhelmed obviously, and I don’t know why it can’t get fixed.”

Another Eagle River resident, Norma Allgood, described similar issues with postal deliveries. She said in an interview that she’d waited in line at the post office for 2 1/2 hours one afternoon in December to pick up packages.

Allgood said she had also received many conflicting messages about the status of packages that did not match reality — that they were out for delivery when they weren’t, or that they’d been delivered when they hadn’t.

In an emailed statement, Rupert with the postal service said he expected wait times for packages and in line at the post office were expected to improve “very soon.”

“Our employees are working incredibly hard and we give them our deepest thanks and appreciation. We apologize for any inconvenience over the last few weeks and customers should see improvements,” he wrote.

Many of the people waiting in line at the post office Thursday said they weren’t frustrated, exactly — the situation was what it was, there was no point in getting angry.

A man holding his toddler in one arm said he’d been waiting over 45 minutes with the hope that he’d be able to pick up his wife’s Christmas present, which the post office had informed him last week had been lost, then later found.

A woman nearby said the line wasn’t as bad as she’d seen it recently: The week before Christmas, she’d waited over two hours. The longtime Eagle River resident said that two-hour line was the longest she’d ever waited at their local post office.

A few minutes later, one woman walked in, saw the line and left. A man smiled wryly and shook his head when someone asked if he was line. He rummaged around in his pocket for his P.O. box key.

“You think I’m waiting in that line?” he said with a laugh.

For Allgood and Udevitz, the issue with unreliable mail delivery is about more than just missing Amazon packages.

Udevitz cited a recent news article that described ballots from multiple rural Alaska communities going uncounted after getting lost in the mail. She couldn’t stop thinking about it — how terrible it would feel knowing that your vote didn’t count.

And for Allgood, packages during the holidays mean extra to military members stationed in Alaska.

“I am a USAF retiree and I just can’t keep from thinking about how much the holiday packages from friends and family who are far away mean to those sacrificing to serve our country in this cold and otherwise challenging Alaska assignment,” Allgood said in an email. “They deserve better.”

Mail theft

On top of the other mail delivery issues that Eagle River residents have been experiencing as of late, the Anchorage Police Department is also searching for a woman accused of stealing mail in the area.

Police said in an online statement that the woman, who they identified as Jacqueline Brewer, 41, had been observed driving around an East Anchorage neighborhood stealing mail from mailboxes in early December.

A subsequent investigation by police found that Brewer had stolen mail from over 80 residents of the Chugiak, Peters Creek and Eagle River areas, along with 10 residents in Anchorage.

A warrant for Brewer’s arrest was issued Thursday, and her location is currently unknown, police said this week. Police said that all the recovered mail had been returned to the U.S. Postal Service to be put back into circulation.

Anyone who suspects they might be a victim of mail fraud is encouraged to check their financial statements for unauthorized transactions and their credit reports for unauthorized accounts, police said. Affected Alaskans can file a police report online at anchoragepolice.com.