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Thomaston currently has one small post office, employing six clerks and 11 carriers to cover the six city and two rural routes in town. Eleven years ago, D'Amato began his postal career here as a carrier. Last June, D'Amato returned to the post office as a supervisor with three years of supervisory experience under his belt at larger post offices in Bristol, Hartford and Monroe.
D'Amato said he was excited to transfer to Thomaston because he already knew the town and it is much smaller and quieter.
"I'd much rather be in this office," he said. "The setup makes it much easier to stay on top of things."
Staying on top of things is what D'Amato must do, as he is responsible for the day-to-day operations at the post office. He says the mail business, however, is just a continuous loop.
"We get mail in, we send mail out," he said.
When mail is dropped off in any Thomaston drop box, it is sent to Wallingford to be processed and redistributed. Once in Wallingford, all mail is put into a machine, which scans the zip code (even handwritten) and applies a bar code to sort the mail into routes. D'Amato said the machines are never 100 percent accurate, but only a small percentage are wrongly coded.
Something mailed in Thomaston to a Thomaston address should take only one day to deliver, he said. But, don't miss the collection time, as D'Amato said that is the number one reason mailing a letter may take longer.
If you want to know where your mail is at all times, according to D'Amato the only true tracking service is the USPS Express Mail service, which costs $14.40 for a half-pound or flat rate envelope. With Express Mail, the sender can track the progress of his or her mail online at www.usps.com and is provided with a date and time of delivery. Another way to make sure your mail is properly delivered is delivery confirmation, which is an additional 60 cents for an ounce of first class mail.
D'Amato said although he had nothing to do with the increase in postage, he can understand why it may have been necessary. With the increases in gas prices, D'Amato said the cost for each post office to deliver mail has significantly increased. According to the USPS Web site, the reason for this first increase since 2002 is to fulfill a federal law passed in 2003 that requires the Postal Service to place $3.1 billion in an escrow account by Oct. 1.
With the increased use of e-mail and other methods of communication, one may think the USPS business has declined. However, D'Amato said in his 11 years in the postal service, the only real drop in business he has seen was immediately following 9/11. D'Amato said he believes people were scared that their mail could come into contact with anthrax. Since then, D'Amato said the mail business has been increasing "like crazy."
The busiest times of the year are fall, with back to school bulk catalog mailings and the recent holiday season. D'Amato said this year, however, the business didn't just drop off after the holidays because people wanted to get their mail out before the rate increased.
D'Amato said the post office makes most of its money through bulk mailings, because although it is cheaper, it is a high volume mailing.
"We get tons of bulk mail every month," said D'Amato. "Once it hits our back dock we have two days to get it to someone."
Because bulk mail is third-class rate it is not forwarded. If the mailing is sent to someone who no longer lives at the address listed on the mailing, it will be discarded and recycled, said D'Amato, which is why so many bulk mailings also list "or current resident."
D'Amato said one of the biggest complaints he hears is the lack of an local drop box. A while back, Thomaston's post office used to keep in-town mail in the building, but D'Amato said the fact that they send the mail out now to be processed should not affect the time frame in which it is delivered.
"It's the center of town," he said. "Everyone comes here. There are going to be complaints from time to time."
Though, D'Amato said he would not comment on the issue, a recent complaint about the post office's services came from the Thomaston Democratic Town Committee.
During last year's election campaign, the DTC mailed campaign information to every household in town and two other mailings to registered Democrats via bulk mail.
Wayne Kamens, chairman of the Thomaston DTC, said he was upset because he had heard that some people did not receive some of the mailings or received them after the election. Kamens said when he contacted D'Amato to request information about the mailings' delivery he was given minimal information and was instructed to contact consumer affairs about his complaint.
Kamens said he believes that close to 97 percent of the first mailing was delivered, which he said is satisfactory. For the DTC's second mailing, however, Kamens said he and a number of committee members did not receive a letter that was supposed to have been mailed to all registered Democrats in town. Finally, Kamens said a third and final time-sensitive mailing was received late by a number of recipients.
Kamens said D'Amato told him that the post office has a policy for political mail, and that the mailings would be treated as a first-class pieces of mail. Kamens said D'Amato would not show him such a policy, however. Kamens also said he has asked D'Amato for a written response citing reasons for the mailings' distribution problems - a response he has yet to receive.
"We (Thomaston DTC members) just want to know if we have done something wrong so we can do it differently next time," said Kamens. "If we don't know we will keep repeating the same problem and where does that get you?"
When asked about the issue, D'Amato said he was not allowed to discuss the complaint, but that it was a "printing and distribution problem" and that it had to be handled between the customer and consumer affairs.
Kamens said he recently contacted the consumer affairs number provided to him, and they told him they needed to talk to D'Amato regarding the issue and then would get back to him. Kamens said he is not sure yet, if the DTC will proceed to recover the money spent on postage for the mailings, but will continue to ask for some sort of response.
Whether the issue is that of a printing error (which could include wrong names/addresses) or that of our local post office is yet to be determined. D'Amato only had praise for his post office and the entire USPS.
"(The USPS) is more efficient now than it's ever been," said D'Amato.
Editor's Note: Do you agree with D'Amato, that our local post office is running efficiently and effectively? Please send me an e-mail with your experiences and/or complaints to thomaston@ctcentral.com.
