In mid-January, Marshall Haine, owner and operator of Family Eye Care Center of Virginia in Ashland, received a check in the mail and went to the bank to deposit it.
It was a routine task, Haine said, and he didn’t think anything of it until the bank kicked the check back as stale-dated — too old to cash or deposit — and he was hit with a $12 fee and left with an unusable check worth “a good amount of money.”
As it turns out, the check had been written and postmarked in May 2023, Haine said, and took over 8 months for it to make its way through the U.S. Postal Service to his optometry practice. It expired while still en route.
And it is not the first time this has happened.
“We have checks go missing all the time,” Haine said. “Even (USPS employees) will tell you it’s crazy.”
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Haine is among the countless Virginians who have reported persistent mail service issues and disruptions, including stolen, missing and delayed mail. The problem has become so pronounced that state and local elected officials have begged USPS representatives to speak to the public and address their concerns — to no avail.
USPS officials repeatedly have declined to discuss the state of mail service in Virginia, which ranks dead last among U.S. states for on-time delivery of first-class mail, according to the main watchdog agency that oversees the post office. Internal issues appear to be a factor. External threats, such as mail theft and fraud, also are on the rise.
For people like Haine, the problem goes far deeper than mere statistics and rankings. He relies on the post office to run his practice, but lately, the institution has been “a dam on progress” that threatens the survival of local businesses, he said.
‘They’re strangling business’
Virginians regularly depend on the USPS to exchange checks, bills, tax documents, jury summons and medications. In statewide elections in 2023, over 825,000 Virginians — about 33% of all eligible voters in the state — voted by absentee ballot. The service is a critical part of American democracy and the economy, according to elected officials, and the impacts of its failures are profound.
Haine said he knows this all too well.
His practice is medical in nature, which means he regularly receives checks from insurance providers. He also often pays contractors — electricians, plumbers and others who keep his clinic open and functioning — via mailed checks.
Family Eye Care Center of Virginia has been in business for 40 years, Haine said, and, historically, mailing checks has not presented an issue. But lately, he has noticed a steep decline in mail efficiency and efficacy.
Haine estimated that roughly 20% of the checks he mails to vendors simply vanish without a trace, forcing him to rewrite them. Checks sent to him from insurance companies also disappear, he said, meaning he has to reach out to the companies and get the checks reissued.
Haine said he has had nearly $6,000 worth of checks go missing in transit with the USPS in recent months. The issue is hurting his practice. In addition to costing him extra time and labor, Haine said he has been charged late payment fees and lost out on interest.
“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” Haine said. “They’re strangling business. They’re killing progress. (Someone) needs to do their job.”
‘Getting the runaround’
Business owners are not the only ones hurting.
Milo Triana Sox, who lives in an apartment complex in western Henrico County, said he ordered an engagement ring from a vendor on the website Etsy in early September. He was planning to use the ring to propose to his partner, and was looking forward to what he hoped would be a “beautiful moment.”
That moment still has not happened.
Sox said he received a notification that the ring had been delivered, but when he went to his mailbox, it wasn’t there.
He and his partner have had mail go missing frequently since they moved to their apartment in 2022, Sox said. But an engagement ring is no ordinary piece of mail, so he contacted the local post office to get help.
Sox initially was assured by a USPS representative that the ring had been delivered “on the day and time they said it was,” he said. Then he was told that it probably had been returned to the sender.
He reached out to the vendor, who told him that the ring had not made it back. So Sox called the post office again, this time to open a complaint.
A week went by, Sox said, and he heard nothing. To his astonishment, when he called the post office a third time, he was informed that his complaint had been marked as resolved and closed. A representative told him that USPS records indicated Sox had been contacted and informed the complaint had been closed, but Sox says no such thing ever happened.
Sox spoke with a manager, who “explained how confusing (the) apartment complex is, and how it’s nobody’s fault,” he said. The manager was rude and dismissive, Sox said, and did not seem to be interested in helping him.
Sox still has no idea where the ring ended up and, at this point, said he does not believe he will ever find it or receive compensation. He said he feels like he is “getting the runaround from a system that is essentially built to gaslight people who are struggling.”
“I’m really frustrated,” he said. “Being in poverty, every dollar that we spend is pretty carefully thought (out) … Spending hours on the phone going through an automated system, talking to countless people who can’t give you any answers, and even being yelled at by local managers is really disheartening.”
‘What the hell is going on?’
Haine and Sox are two of the dozens of Richmond and Virginia residents who have reached out to the Richmond Times-Dispatch to share their mail-related horror stories.
David Lipp, of Chesterfield County, said he struggled to obtain a disabled parking placard through the mail after undergoing two knee-replacement surgeries in as many months. Lipp waited over a month for the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to receive his application after he mailed it in on Jan. 9.
Eventually, he went to the DMV himself and stood in line with his walker so he could deliver the form in person.
“It makes you not want to mail anything,” Lipp said.
Meanwhile, in Henrico, Lucy McCown said sensitive medical records that her doctors mailed from VCU Medical Center to her home in the West End took over a month to reach her and inexplicably left the state on the way.
According to tracking information provided by McCown to the Times-Dispatch, the CD containing the records traveled from Richmond to Greensboro, N.C; back to Richmond (where it sat for about a week); then to Norfolk; and then finally back to Richmond. The “crazy journey,” as McCown described it, lasted from Dec. 21 until Jan. 30.
“My daughter’s medical (and) personal information was on there,” McCown said. “If they’d fallen into the wrong hands … ”
The stories go on. Richmond-area residents report that they have stopped paying bills, renewing subscriptions and memberships, banking and exchanging gifts via the USPS. Late payment penalties and stop check orders also represent a chronic nuisance.
To Robert Casasnovas, of Midlothian — who said he had to close a bank account and open an entirely new one after someone stole and attempted to deposit a check he had mailed — the trouble with mail service is no trivial matter.
“Too much business, transactions and people’s lives happens through the Postal Service,” Casasnovas said. “What the hell is going on with the mail in Richmond?”