Cellphone videos show overflowing mailboxes in parts of DC and Montgomery County

Problems with mail collection boxes

Concerns about the mail have been high for many months since reports that the U.S. Postal Service was scaling back in overtime and was also removing sorting equipment.

BETHESDA, Md. (FOX 5 DC) - Concerns about the mail have been high for many months now since reports that the U.S. Postal Service was scaling back in overtime and was also removing sorting equipment.

Mail collection boxes are also an issue with some within the District and parts of Maryland, found to be overflowing.

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FOX 5 viewer Megan Henley Kinney of Bethesda shot cellphone video of two different locations and shared them with us.

Kinney said, the mail at the Westlake post office located in Bethesda, was supposed to be collected by 3:30 p.m Saturday afternoon but people’s mail continued to pile up until at least Monday morning.

“So I went inside and the two inner boxes were packed too so I just kept my postcards with me and went back home,” Kinney explained.

When she came home, Kinney said that she tried to make phone calls to report what she saw.

“I couldn’t get through the phone-tree which I wasn’t surprised about but then I also tweeted out to the USPS, the USPS helpdesk and the OIG for the USPS and I haven’t heard anything back from any of them,” she said.

Kinney said she also happened to be dropping off mail at a Northwest D.C post office over the weekend. She said that when she got to the three mailboxes located on Connecticut Avenue, just over the District line, she noticed the same thing.

“Number one can’t open because it’s full and number two can’t open because it’s full,” Kinney is heard saying during one of her cellphone videos of the mailboxes.

It seems that this isn’t the first time a similar issue has come up.

FOX 5 has also been following some posts on the Nextdoor neighborhood app from back in August where people in the Bethesda community were reporting about their tracked mail not getting scanned —much less even getting picked up from the collection box located at the Wildwood Shopping Center off of Old Georgetown Road.

We checked the mailbox on Monday afternoon and didn’t see any mail piling up to the top.

“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble or anything but I’m really concerned about people’s ballots,” said Kinney. “I just want to make sure that the post office is staffed well enough to take of the next couple of weeks because we really need them.”

FOX 5’s Ayesha Khan contacted communication specialists for both the District and Maryland to see if they were aware of the overflowing mailboxes.

No one from the Maryland USPS responded to our inquiry.

Michael Hotovy, a USPS strategic communications specialist for the District, said in a statement:

“The collection box at 5636 Connecticut Ave. NW was collected at its regularly scheduled times over the past weekend and today. On occasion, a large volume of mail or parcels dropped into a collection box can cause a backup of mail. The Postal Service will continue to monitor volumes on collection boxes and will adjust its collection schedule if needed.”