Students are frustrated by the Bryan Center Post Office's hours of operation and the time it takes to receive mail.
First-year Divinity School student Luke Lin is frustrated.
His birthday package, sent by priority mail about three weeks ago by his parents in Maryland, did not arrive on time. It was supposed to take three to four days to reach him, but it took two and a half weeks.
“I’ve never experienced this sort of feeling of unreliability before,” Lin said. “As an undergraduate at Emory [University], I never had to worry about whether my packages would make it to me in a timely manner. Moreover, I would not have to go through any waiting period for packages to be sorted out or have them potentially lost.”
Lin’s experience with Duke Postal Operations is not unusual. Many students said they have had packages and pieces of mail arrive several days or even weeks late.
When The Chronicle told Michael Trogdon, Postal Operations general manager, about the numerous complaints students had about the delay of their mail, he said the office examined the packages on the student shelves to compare when they were mailed with when they were entered into the system.
The majority of packages sitting on the shelves, he said, were sent two to three days before Duke processed them. A few had a lapse of four days, and a few packages were sent more than a week before. He stressed that most of the delayed mail, however, had incorrect addresses—the wrong box number, no box number or the wrong zip code.
“When you are dealing with hundreds of incoming packages each day, I don’t think this is out of the ordinary,” Trogdon said, referring to the errors in addresses. “But as long as the mail and packages are all correctly addressed, there should not be any backlog of mail—packages, parcels, letters, magazines, etc.”
Students, however, still said they thought the post office was inefficient.
“When I lived on campus it used to take me seven to 10 days to receive a first-class letter mailed from Cincinnati, Ohio,” said third-year medical student David Evans, Trinity ’02. “Now that I live off-campus, I receive the same letter in three to four days.”
Senior Anthony Lau said mail delivered from the Raleigh-Durham area to his home in South Carolina would normally take anywhere from three to four business days. There were times, however, when his mail was postmarked 10 to 12 days prior to arrival.
“It shouldn’t take 10 days for my mail to arrive from such a close location,” Lau said. “It’s annoying because a few things that my parents sent me were time sensitive. Having this delay almost made me miss the deadlines.”
Trogdon said except for the first few weeks of school, when the post office receives many hundreds of packages each day, the packages are promptly keyed into the system by 9 a.m. each day. Also, he said the post office has a package system in place that greatly helps to reduce delivery errors.
“When we key in a student’s box number, the computer speaks the student’s name back to us,” he said. “This helps us to make certain we are sending the right e-mail for the right package to the right student.”
But this system is not without its flaws. Sophomore Martin Zimmerman said the post office has given him the wrong packages before.
“The package had my box number on it, but it wasn’t addressed to me,” Zimmerman recalled. “Once I realized the package wasn’t mine, I went back and gave it to them, and they took it back and did not ask any questions.”
But it is not just late mail that causes Duke students to complain. Junior Jennifer Reckleff grumbles that the post office never seems to be open when she is out of class. Currently, the West and East Campus post offices open Monday to Friday at 8:30 a.m. The West post office closes at 4:30 p.m. and the East office shuts its doors at 4 p.m.
“I think many students—like me—have class past 4:30 p.m. If I check my e-mail right before class and find out I have a package, I’m unable to get it until the next day,” Reckleff said.
She suggested the post office shift its hours in the morning to later in the day or open a few hours on Saturdays.
Trogdon questioned how many students were actually in class from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. without a break to get their mail. He said if students are in class Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., it would be acceptable for a roommate or friend to pick up packages for them. But, the friend would need to know the box number and have the roommate’s or friend’s DukeCard with her to prove that she had gotten permission to get the package.
Trogdon said the post office operated on Saturdays last year, but the total amount of annual Saturday revenue amounted to less than $300.
“That’s not $300 per Saturday; its $300 for the whole school year,” Trogdon said. “The post office is not totally run by the government. We do closely follow their guidelines, but we also are fiscally responsible to Duke. Paying clerks overtime to work Saturdays for only five or six students is not prudent.”
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