The United States Postal Service’s Informed Delivery system has been experiencing technical difficulties in the Gainesville area.
Gainesville resident Marsha Martin in mid-September posted a comment on Nextdoor, a social network service for neighbors, asking, “to anyone who has Informed Delivery from the post office, are you having issues with incorrect notifications?”
Over 50 people responded they were.
Informed Delivery is a free online feature offered by the U.S. Postal Service, first introduced in 2014 and now used by nearly 15 million Americans.
After a change to the system at the end of August, users noticed it wasn’t working the way it had before. When she checked her email from Informed Delivery, no images of the mail would show up – only an error message.
“We noticed it probably the beginning of September,” Martin said.
Martin has tried to fix the issues with her Informed Delivery since noticing the feature has not been working properly.
“We’ve complained via USPS.com, talked to representatives, talked to robots and no response,” Martin posted on Nextdoor hours after her original post.
Weeks later, her Informed Delivery has not been fixed.
Jim Hencin, another Gainesville resident who voiced his issues with Informed Delivery on Nextdoor, said he signed up for Informed Delivery in January and had no issues until July.
“I started getting notices with no items supposedly to be delivered,” Hencin said. “Sometimes there would be just a few items but more than what would actually be delivered to me.”
He said he got frustrated with the issues and unsubscribed.
“I didn’t even try to bring this to the attention of the post office because I wasn’t sure it would make a difference,” Hencin said. “About a month ago, I requested that they stop sending me the Informed Delivery notices.”
Carol Hunt, a USPS spokesperson for the region covering Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee and the Panhandle, said the Postal Service combined the Informed Delivery service into its mobile app at the same time as the issues started happening. She declined to comment further on the problems reported.