Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, December 11, 1994                   TAG: 9412130031
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CLAUDINE WILLIAMS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

THE CHECKS WERE IN THE MAIL - FOR A VERY LONG TIME

Her troubles started in September 1993, when 38 checks totaling about $50,000 seemingly vanished into the U.S. mail.

"I remember that we got a disconnect notice from Apco," said Colleen Dresser, controller for the Maddox Agency on King George Avenue. "That's when I started to take notice."

It was only the beginning. The city wrote that it had not received payment for the water bill. The commonwealth of Virginia began demanding unremitted sales taxes. Vendors never received payment for supplies.

"People were irate," Dresser said.

So Dresser began the tedious task of canceling the checks. She negotiated with the bank to reduce service charges, and contacted all 40 businesses to assure them payment was on the way.

The Maddox Agency hired couriers to deliver payments that couldn't wait. Others, they dropped in the corner mailbox - "with our fingers crossed," Dresser said.

Over the next eight months, mail service was hit-or-miss, Dresser said. A payment sent to a graphics company on Fifth Street took 40 days to get there - a distance of six blocks. Out-of-town postal delivery took even longer - up to three months.

"It was like riding a roller coaster," she said. "Up one day, down another."

Maddox said she called the Postal Service about a dozen times. She was shuffled from employee to employee.

Most frustrating was the contradictory advice they offered: Put tracers on everything lost; don't put tracers on anything lost; put all mail in a curbside mailbox rather than depend on carriers to pick it up; and finally, don't use the box because the carriers pick up that mail also.

Maddox and Dresser took notes on everything they were told. They also collected postmarked envelopes to keep track of the problems.

By March, fed up and suspecting that she wasn't alone, Maddox solicited tales from business contacts who had also been plagued by mail delivery problems. She created her own complaint forms.

About 16 people responded in writing; others called in their complaints. The tales sounded familiar: useless tracers put on lost checks, utility cutoffs, missed loan payments and resorting to hired messengers.

Some of the writers banded together with Maddox to launch a makeshift postal victims support group. Among the members were Angie Ciafardini, vice president of AMT employment service, and Esther Williams, president of Walters Printing in Roanoke.

Williams' problems with the Postal Service spanned about two years and are still unresolved.

"I cannot mail a check to Dillard Paper Company here in Roanoke," Williams wrote in a letter to the Postal Service. "Their post office box is located in the main post office. The check either never arrives or is up to three months getting to Dillard."

Ciafardini sends employee paychecks through the mail.

"It could take a good 14 days for mail to get from our end of the city to the opposite end," she said. "If you were getting paid by mail you would want your check soon, wouldn't you?"

The company refuses to drop its mail in the mailbox across the street. Instead, they take it directly to the post office.

In June, Maddox discussed her postal problems with Roanoke Postmaster Billy Martin.

"They did not admit that there was a problem, but they agreed to do whatever they could to help," she said.

In an interview Thursday, Martin said that Maddox did have a valid problem with her service and that he had met with her to help.

In person or by telephone, Martin contacted the people who registered complaints. Since then, Maddox and most of the group say they have not had any problems with lost mail.

"If I had to grade them they would get a C minus for lost mail and for timeliness they would get a D," said Ciafardini.

The postal victims support group has since dissolved. Maddox now wonders if the problems were isolated and temporary, perhaps a result of some sort of transitional period the post office was going through with new machinery or employees.

Martin did not know what caused the problems or whether the late deliveries and lost mail among the other customers were coincidental.

"Without looking at all of the notes and everything else I can't say whether they were isolated or not," Martin said. "But I can say that we resolved all of the problems."

But no one knows for sure what happened. Maddox hopes she's not getting preferential treatment after raising a ruckus.

"I would do that with any customer not with just the Maddox agency," Martin said. "Our goal is to serve our customers. We are just like everyone else. We are not perfect, but we have problems like everyone else, and we try to resolve them."

Williams still refuses to mail checks to Dillard Paper Co., opting for hand delivery. She hopes her luck with the mail will change, but she's not taking any chances.

"I don't think the problem would ever be resolved until the country collapsed and people began to appreciate their jobs," said Williams. "I don't believe the workers appreciate their jobs, so they don't care about the mail."