Guam – With the uproar over incorrect mailing addresses with the United States Postal Service two months ago, Guam Officer-in-Charge Christopher Warren “deeply apologized” to the mayors this morning during their monthly meeting.
Last month, island mayors expressed their frustration with the USPS over the blunder they say the postal service created in changing the address system islandwide.
Warren apologized to the mayors “for any confusion and inconvenience it may have caused.” He explained that there are many reason mail can be kicked out. Among those is technological advances made by USPS. Warren said that manual sorting stopped this past February and mail is now being sorted using computerized sorting machines.
Warren said, “What we had issues with were reading the addresses. I’d say 80 to 90% of the problem with the addresses were additions to the addresses, which are neighborhood names, building names, especially how they positioned the order of number in the addresses. As far as your addresses go, the village part won’t cause your mail to be kicked out. It’s what’s on the street line and zip code attached to that street line.”
Warren said when USPS sent the letters out informing customers on the correct way to label their addresses, he didn’t mean for the issue to “blow up”. He said, “We put the letters out. Truly did not expect the uproar and confusion that ensued. That was a, as far as myself, an educational experience. I apologize that we didn’t come to you. We truly did not think it would blow up like it did where we would involve you, Department of Public Works all getting in the situation because you had to because you had constituents wondering what’s going on, is my address suddenly wrong after all these years.”
Warren believes working closely together with GovGuam and the mayors would prevent issues from arising in the future. He plans to set up educational seminars to inform mayors and GovGuam offices on how to correctly input an address and give examples of neighborhood names or building names that were causing confusing with the sorting machines.