Greenpoint resident and Dusty Rose founder Maresa Ponitch started a campaign this month to raise money for the North Brooklyn Angels‘ mobile soup kitchen through online sales of pennants, but an increasing amount of what she says is incorrectly processed mail via the Greenpoint Post Office (66 Meserole Ave.) has her worried that customers will not receive their packages.
Ponitch began mailing out the pennants two weeks ago and has received three returned envelopes in the mail marked as having an “insufficient address,” all of which she has verified as having correct adddresses.
Many more returned envelopes are likely waiting Ponitch at her studio where she receives mail: “I’ve also gotten a ton of DMs and emails from people, saying that they haven’t received their pennants yet.”
As the U.S. Postal Service struggles nationwide with a $13 billion revenue shortfall during a public health crisis, Ponitch says that she understands that the staff are overworked. “I’m all for the post office,” she says, adding that alternative mailing services are much costlier when mailing something that fits inside a standard envelope. “I don’t know if someone made a choice when they put the “insufficient address” on the envelopes,” she said.
Staffing shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic caused the Greenpoint Post Office reopened this week with limited hours (closing Mon. – Fri. at 3 p.m.) after canceling window service for all of last week.
Ponitch says that she uses bulk shipping via UPS and FedEx for Dusty Rose’s regular clothing shipments, but other local retailers such as the Brooklyn Record Exchange are expressing the importance of the U.S.P.S’s affordable rates: “Working from home” means packing and shipping discogs orders. As I prepare to haul these to the post office I can’t help but think about how essential the USPS is to our business and any record (or book) stores in the US that rely on mail order for some of their income. ”