Return to Sender: Community fed up with months of mail issues

A Fort Myers woman takes on her community’s problems with the postal service.

Carol Sweeney gathered more than a hundred written complaints over the past few months and brought them directly to the postmaster Tuesday.

She says it’s everything from missing packages to stolen gift cards and mail in the wrong boxes.

Sweeney says these issues have been plaguing her and her neighbors for years, “This is the post office. This isn’t Suzie Jones Boutique. This is important mail to people.”

Now, she has made it her mission to help her neighbors get their mail service straightened out.

She says she’s had problems since she moved to the Heritage Palms Community off Six Mile Cypress Parkway 15 years ago.

“Social security checks and bills that arrive late,” Sweeney says, but quickly realized it wasn’t just an issue for her, “Over the years I’ve heard so many complaints from folks.”

So for the past 6 months, she gathered over a hundred written complaints on the Next Door app.

Sweeney took the complaints directly to the postmaster at the Page Field Post Office.

They wouldn’t WINK film inside but they took her complaints and said they’d look into them and give her a call.

“I have gone to the post office for my own personal things in the past. Unfortunately I can never talk to the postmaster,” Sweeney said.

But today, she finally did.

According to Sweeney, after WINK News reached out to the U.S. Postal Service, she got a call from the postmaster who promised to look into these problems and work to get them resolved.

A U.S. Postal spokesperson also provided us with this statement, reading in part, “…Local postal management has reached out to this customer and is following up with the customer concerns she delivered to the post office…”

And now, she’s hopeful things change for residents of the Heritage Palms Community .

If you have an issue, the U.S. Postal Service spokesperson says to contact them immediately. Customers can call 1-800-ASK-USPS (1-800-275-8777) or go to usps.com/help

If you suspect mail theft, contact the U. S. Postal Inspection Service at 1-877-876-2455 OR postalinspectors.uspis.gov