A FALSE letter from the USPS made one community panic, leading them to believe that they had to pay for new mailboxes.

Residents were told they needed to install new curbside mailboxes so that postal workers no longer have to leave their vehicles to deliver mail.

“This is hard on us to have to spend the money to put up a new mailbox at the curb,” community member Joe Zepeda told local CBS affiliate KHOU.

“We just don’t have it being on a fixed income. It’s kind of hard on us.”

The Houston neighborhood first received a notice about the mailbox changes on March 13.

The USPS warned the community that if they didn’t comply by March 27, their mail would be returned to the sender. 

Houston’s East End resident Joe Vigil contemplating “protesting” the new rule.

“I’m hoping we get some resolution before then,” he said.

“I’m kind of tempted not to do it just to protest but then again they’ve got the upper hand.”

Within hours of KHOU interviewing community members, the USPS confirmed that the letter was sent out in error.

“In this instance, the notices requiring customers to move their mailboxes to the curb were sent in error,” a statement from the agency read.

“Any customer who received a notice should disregard any instructions or information provided. 

“We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

The news came as a major sigh of relief for Vigil and other East End residents.

“We avoided a big problem for the whole neighborhood…it was great,” Vigil told KHOU.

“We’re doing real great now. It’s a reason to celebrate.”

SNAIL MAIL

The letter mess-up comes after the Postmaster Louis DeJoy admitted the USPS is a “broken system.”

In a letter to Congress, DeJoy called the postal system a “broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and core change.”

“Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task,” he wrote.

“Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.” 

DeJoy announced a voluntary early retirement program where 10,000 employees would be offered $15,000 to retire earlier than planned.

The postmaster said he hoped to partner with the Department of Government Efficiency to see through his 10-year Delivering for America plan.

“The Doge team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with,” DeJoy wrote.