SALT LAKE CITY – Imagine if you suddenly stopped receiving mail and couldn’t get an explanation of why from the US Postal Service.
When it happened to a woman in Salt Lake City, she called KSL investigators to find out why the post office refused to deliver.
“What I did was fill out complaints on their website,” Ardis Parshall told KSL. While I was talking to Parshall, a delivery driver stopped to throw some food.
“We haven’t received emails in our neighborhood in six weeks,” Parshall said.
Instead, the USPS keeps the mail for her and a few neighbors at the post office, where they can pick it up. However, Parshall doesn’t drive and walks with a cane, so the millennial walk through the hilly terrain of Salt Lake City Avenues to her post office is tough.
In addition, she is diabetic – placing her in the high-risk category for COVID-19. Her doctors don’t want her on a public bus. Some of the emails you can no longer receive include consumables for diabetics.
Parshall said she got nowhere with her complaints.
“You will receive an automatic response that has been received and the next thing I hear is that my case has been resolved and here is a consumer satisfaction survey,” she said.
After an SLC woman says @USPS stopped delivering e-mail to her neighborhood, and the postal service stopped answering, she called @KSLInvestigates. What I found tonight @ KSL5TV News at 6 p.m. pic.twitter.com/SGOsKPOKLK
– Matt Gephardt KSL (@KslMatt) December 22, 2020
KSL investigators tracked the neighborhood as mail carriers made their way up and down the streets around Parshall’s home – but never made their way. What happens?
No one in the USPS would talk about the situation on camera, but in a statement, a spokesman blamed a dog running on Parshall Street.
“The safety of our carriers is paramount,” USPS officials wrote. They added that “almost 6,000 carriers have suffered dog attacks” so far this year.
“I’ve never had a problem with a dog,” Parshall told KSL.
So where does she leave everything to Parshall and her neighbors?
After our calls, a post office manager came out to personally deliver the correspondence to the residents of the Parshall neighborhood and let them know that they were “working” on a solution.
I also contacted Salt Lake County Pet Services, who confirmed that there was an active issue with a dog in the neighborhood and, in particular, with a dog owner who had refused to follow the rules for several years.