Mail Delivery, First Class

Go ahead and criticize the traffic and the weather all you want, malcontents of the Washington region, but know this about your environs: You are in the midst of great postal service.

Sure, some of the branch offices look a little dowdy, and the neighbor's junk mail sometimes ends up in your box, but in a recent survey by the Gallup Organization, both the U.S. Postal Service's Northern Virginia District and the Capital District (which includes Montgomery County, Prince George's County and parts of Southern Maryland) emerged with five-star customer service ratings.

Among 80 postal districts nationwide, Northern Virginia is one of only four to notch the distinction for 10 consecutive quarters, starting in 2006, when the Postal Service began tracking customer satisfaction through the Five Star Customer Service Program. Rounding out the elite are the Northern New Jersey District and two in Massachusetts, including Boston.

In an unscientific survey of several Northern Virginia branches, there was scant evidence to contradict the study's results. Once the butt of jokes about incompetence and waste, the Postal Service seems to have undergone something of a rehabilitation, at least among Northern Virginians, many of whom see the government-run enterprise as both efficient and a bastion of old-fashioned courtesy and neighborhood charm.

"I'd give them five stars," Dumfries resident Nancy Caseman said outside her branch on Route 1. "A lot of the employees have been here a long time and they're friendly with the customers," she said. "It's got a real small-town feel."

To boot, she said, it is still giving customers a heckuva deal. "I can put a letter to my sister in the mail, and she'll get it in one or two days. For 42 cents!"

"I've got no complaints," Michelle Hudson said of her preferred branch in Manassas. "Even at Christmas, the line moves quickly."

The Gallup survey -- conducted, of course, by mail -- asked customers to rate the Postal Service's performance in such categories as the helpfulness and efficiency of its clerks, and the reliability and accuracy of its home delivery service. In the Northern Virginia District, which extends as far west as Shenandoah County and as far south as Madison County, the agency serves more than 1 million homes and businesses, spokesman Patrick Murphy said.

The region's top five five-star Zip codes are Nokesville, Bristow, Springfield North, Bealeton and Vienna.

"People appreciate the friendly smile they get," Murphy said. "But it's a pretty contemporary organization. We use the most advanced technology out there."

Overall, he said, the Postal Service handles half the world's mail. In the Northern Virginia District alone, that works out to nearly 9 million items a day -- most of which, one would assume, are unwanted credit card offers and life insurance solicitations.

Not that the region's mail recipients are easy to please. In an area with a huge number of federal employees, there are sizable stereotypes about government inefficiency to overcome.