21 September 04
My husband received an honorable discharge from the US Army 2 years ago. He was awarded 20% VA Disability. Unfortunately, we are unhappy with that ruling and are trying to go through the appeals process. We have contacted a Veterans Service Organization (VSO) in hopes this will help. The VA requested we choose between a traditional appeal and a Decision Review Officer (DRO). We were advised by the VSO to request a DRO.
Now, here is where the complications begin. We were given 60 days from the date of the letter to let VA know, in writing, what our decision would be. We received this letter in mid July. After researching about this decision on our own for about 3 weeks, we decided to try to locate a VSO. With the two hurricanes we had in the first 2 weeks of August, most of the VSOs were busy helping with relief efforts. We finally found one with the NCOA; but he was on vacation when we called.
While this gentleman was on vacation we still tried to understand this process and make an educated decision; but did not fair well. We did finally get in contact with him upon his return and were able to make an informed decision. Then, we express mailed a letter with my husband’s decision for a DRO to the address of our Regional VA Office in St. Petersburg based on the information listed on their website. The next day it was returned to us 'non-deliverable'.
Upon inspection of the tracking number, the post office delivered it to the wrong zip code. We took this letter back with our tracking information and they resent it. Again, the tracking information went to the wrong zip code. Again we took the information and the letter back to the post office. This time, they called down to the Post Office in Tampa Bay and asked why it kept getting returned. The Post Office in Tampa said they have a new address and they gave VA long enough to change the information on their website. They had approximately 9 tons of mail for the VA Regional Office they had to return to senders because the address was incorrect. By this time, our date to decide which Appeal we wanted had passed all because the VA did not provide a correct mailing address.
Now, there are two things I want to point out here. First is the fact that my husband's letter to VA would have gotten to them on time, had VA taken the time to correctly display their mailing address on their website. We had mailed things to that mailing address plenty of times, and did not think we would have to call their office to verify the address.
Second is the fact that VA is causing added work load on our postal workers and could be considered waste in the Fraud, Waste and Abuse system of our federal government. A simple 5 minutes change on a website could save the postal workers such a headache and the taxpayers thousands of dollars. They are now diverting their energies to RETURNING mail rather than DELIVERING mail.
Remove the idea that the Tampa Bay Post Office exaggerated their estimate and let's just say that the '9 tons' is an accurate statement. That's 18,000 pounds of mail. Let's also say that each piece is only a letter averaging out to 8oz at first class mail. That equals 36,000 letters. At $.37 a letter, that is equal to $13,320 in postage. Not only that, now you have to direct the postal employees’ energies into returning those letters and you have to pay their wages. Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and Processing Machine Operators mean average wage is $14.81/hour. And let's just say an average worker can process 1,000 pieces of mail in an hour. That would take a combined total of 36 hours with a total of $533.16 to process the returns of all 36,000 pieces of mail. And we are not factoring in any additional pieces of mail that come in after.
We just wanted to bring this troubled process to your attention. If it happened to us, it has undoubtedly happened to someone else. If no one says anything, no one knows and the problem does not get fixed. We must make our voices heard.