KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Brian Amick was working from his home in south Kansas City when a neighbor called him and told him to look outside. That’s when Amick saw the damage. A brick and stone pillar holding six mail boxes had been reduced to rubble by a postal truck.
“Obviously he hit it at a fair amount of speed,” Amick said, adding that he even spoke to the letter carrier who had been driving the truck and took a photo the truck’s damaged bumper on his phone.
The accident happened September 10. For the last five months, Amick and his neighbors in their upper middle-class subdivision near Wornall and 125th Street, have been trying to get the post office to pay for the damages. But Amick said no one has returned his phone calls or letters, which included estimates to repair the pillar and purchase new mail boxes.
Amick refused to give up and located a federal form online to fill out when making a claim against the post office. After filling out the form, Amick served it in person to an employee at the Martin City Post Office. He documented that moment on camera, as well.
The Martin City postal employee told Amick he would have to deal with the Post Office’s Tort Claims Division, located at the main Post Office in Union Station.
And Amick tried, repeatedly calling and writing to the division’s two employees.
After 38 days and more than a dozen futile attempts to contact someone, Amick and his neighbors had enough. They purchased new mail boxes on Amazon.com and hired a stone mason to repair the pillar. They then submitted the $2,200 bill to the Post Office. And again, they were ignored.
Amick told Fox 4 Problem Solvers he’s disgusted with how both he and his neighbors have been treated by a government agency struggling to stay financially afloat.
“If you want to win back customers especially from UPS or FedEx, don’t treat them the way they’ve treated us,” Amick said. “Every single person in our neighborhood are all customers of the postal service and they all know about this and they are not happy.”
Fox 4 Problem Solvers agreed and called the Post Office, explaining every painful detail of Amick’s postal saga. A spokeswoman for the Post Office apologized and told us that never should have happened. Two hours after that conversation, Mr. Amick finally heard from someone at the Post Office’s mysterious Tort Division. Amick said he was told to resubmit his complaint form so that they can expedite payment.
We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this problem will finally be solved. If it’s not, the only recourse Mr. Amick and his neighbors will have is to sue the Post Office in federal court. We’ll keep you… posted.