Committing to serve the community

To the Editor:

I would like to respond to a recent letter to by a local postal customer who criticized our Libby Post Office. It is often helpful to give customers information and reasons behind postal policy.

The letter writer took the Libby Post Office to task for following postal policy in regards to inspecting and opening this customer's "media mail" packages. Media mail basically pertains to a special service which allows customers to mail books, recordings, video tapes, etc. at a reduced rate.

It is within U. S. Postal Service policy to inspect and check "media mail" to determine whether the proper rate of postage is paid and whether the contents qualify as media mail. In this case the mailings did not have sufficient postage, so they were returned to the sender for more postage.

The letter writer also criticized the Post Office for the longer delivery time it took for several letters to reach their destination. I assure our customers that the Libby Post Office and postal facilities work hard to ensure that all the mail is processed and delivered in the most expeditious manner.

With that said, I am certainly sorry to learn that a letter possibly took 11 days to get from Libby to Troy. Without question, that is outside of our normal delivery standard. A number of logistical factors could have unfortunately caused this but nevertheless we always try hard to ensure timely deliver. Typically, Montana post offices rank among the best states for having the highest on-time local Fist Class Mail delivery scores in the nation.

The last point in which the customer criticized the Postal Service was for the longer time it was taking for mail to be delivered following a recent change of address. After a customer has filed a change of address, it could take up to 10 business days for mail sent to the old address, to begin arriving at the customer's new address. There are several factors to be considered such as:

What state date was on the Change of Address for mail forwarding to begin?

How far in advance was the Postal Service notified of the move?

Where was the Change of Address originated from?

It helps if the customer can have their correspondents start using the new address right away.

I am happy to discuss any mailing concern or issue with our customers. Our Libby Post Office team is dedicated to providing our customers with top service. We also appreciate the great support and business of all our Libby area postal customers.

Bruce Moog

Postmaster of the Libby Post Office