Mail Delivery, First Class
N.Va., Other Area Post Offices Score High in Gallup Survey

By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 10, 2008

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.

"Customers in Northern Virginia expect excellent service because they're demanding, and our employees understand that and deliver," Northern Virginia district manager Michael Furey said.

Indeed, customers at several branch offices spoke of their local carriers in reverential terms. When the letter carrier in Nancy Raines's North Arlington neighborhood retired a few years ago, she and several of her neighbors bought him cards and paid tribute. His name was Love -- Herb Love, she said -- and he carried dog biscuits along his route to appease the barkers, biters and other growling sentries of the neighborhood.

"My kids made signs for him saying, 'Thank you so much for liking my dog,' " Raines recalled. "He was really a part of the street."

Charles Lantz was once that kind of carrier. When he retired in 1978, he'd been delivering mail in the same North Arlington neighborhood for 28 years. "I knew everyone by name," he said. "Even when they moved away, I'd memorize the new address so I could just write it in."

Lantz, now 84, has had the same post office box at the North George Mason Drive station since 1951. Back then, it was box number 711, but now it's 7111, after the branch had to add a fourth digit.

Lantz is hardly ready to hand out five stars to today's postal carriers, whom he considers a bit soft. "These carriers don't get on the street until 11 a.m.," he said. "I used to be out at 8:30."

Of course, back then there were no post offices that remained open until midnight, like the one Falls Church resident John Johnson frequents in Merrifield. He's thrilled with the round-the-clock service. "If you want to get stamps or send a package at midnight, there'll be somebody in there at that counter," he said.

As for the Postal Service itself, Johnson, a construction worker, called it "a necessary evil."

Why's that?

"It brings my bills to me," he said.