Nearly 350 readers responded to a Los Angeles Times request for information about their experiences with the Postal Service; of those, 87% said they’d noticed a slowdown in mail delivery in recent weeks, and 13% said they’d seen mailboxes removed or disabled during the same period.
Christine Kneeland is among those who reached out to The Times. The 73-year-old lives outside of tiny Sutter Creek in Northern California. She’s been paying on a life insurance policy faithfully for the last 30 years or so. But in July, her insurance agent called her with bad news.
The $100,000 policy had been canceled because she hadn’t paid her May and June premiums — which had been sent to her via the Postal Service.
Kneeland spent seven weeks — a time of extreme anxiety, she said — to get the problem resolved. Then, in August, after driving a little over a mile to her mailbox, she found two premium notices inside. One was dated May 16, the other June 16.
“And here I am getting them in August,” she said. “I was so angry.”
