[ { "name": "CTA - Newsletter Promo", "component": "16009927", "insertPoint": "1/2", "requiredCountToDisplay": "5" },{ "name": "GPT - RectangleSmallDisplayOnly - Slot Inline - Content", "id": "GPTRectangleSmallDisplayOnlySlotInlineContent", "component": "15166787", "insertPoint": "5", "requiredCountToDisplay": "3" },{ "name": "GPT - RectangleSmallDisplayOnly - Slot Inline - Content", "id": "GPTRectangleSmallDisplayOnlySlotInlineContent", "component": "15166787", "insertPoint": "10", "requiredCountToDisplay": "8" },{ "name": "GPT - RectangleSmallDisplayOnly - Slot Inline - Content", "id": "GPTRectangleSmallDisplayOnlySlotInlineContent", "component": "15166787", "insertPoint": "15", "requiredCountToDisplay": "13" } ]

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor the gloom of night stays these couriers from the completion of their appointed rounds" has been the unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service for generations.

According to its website, one of the official missions of the U.S. Postal Service "is to provide the nation with reliable" service. The Lompoc Post Office frequently misses that target in my neighborhood.

Apparently, the Lompoc Post Office hasn't gotten the memo, or the carriers and management just don't care if mail service is reliable. If the carrier leaves the post office with a full truck and returns with an empty one at the end of the day, they figure they have provided reliable service.

I live in the northeast section of the city, and our mail is placed in a group mailbox. The receptacles are larger on the carrier (street) side than they are on the side I open to get my mail. There is a quarter-inch metal lip on four sides of the side I open, and this design flaw means that just because the mail fits on the carrier side doesn't mean I can get it out of the box.

Mail delivery arrives consistently late in the day. I have been told that we live on the "end of the route" and that's why we rarely get our mail before 7 p.m. and sometimes as late as 8:30 p.m. I have also noted that we seem to have several different carriers each week, which may be part of the delivery problem.

The last issue is that I often get other people's mail; if the correct recipient lives nearby I take them their mail; if not I place it back in the outgoing box if it fits in the slot provided. Some mistakenly delivered mail is for addresses several blocks away to addresses that don't resemble our address.

This has been the case several times in the past few years, and I notified the route supervisor on multiple occasions to express my concerns, and he is always ready with an excuse, but service issues persist.

Last night, Dec. 2, the carrier placed three items in my box after 7:30 p.m. I was able to get two of them out, but they were both for my neighbor; the last one was too big to get out of the opening, so it remained until I called the route supervisor the following day. He assured me that the issue would be fixed.

Then on Dec. 3, I once again got someone else's mail in my box and on Dec. 5 too, plus they didn't deliver a newspaper; I guess his "fix" didn't work.

I am getting tired of excuses.

For more than 20 years we had a permanent carrier, the deliveries always occurred before 5 p.m., and I never got anyone else's mail. It's time to fix these problems; since the route supervisor can't seem to fix them, maybe it's time for the postmaster to take some action.

Then again, maybe the postmaster doesn't care either. After all, who else can we get to deliver the mail?