“We don’t have any stamps.”
It’s a statement that has been repeated for weeks at the place where you’d least expect to hear it: a local post office. Carmen Maiolino wasn’t sure what he had just been told when he first heard it.
“I came in yesterday and they said no stamps,” said Maiolino. “So I was quite confused.”
The post office in the Olney Plaza Shopping Center ran out of stamps shortly after Christmas, leaving customers stunned. The Overbrook Post Office also ran out of stamps towards the end of last year and was completely out until Wednesday morning.
“I’m down to one stamp now,” said Arthur Pettus of Northeast Philadelphia. “What am I supposed to do? Run all over the city to try and find some stamps? But what do they care?”
“It’s hard that they don’t have them,” said Freddie Melenez of Olney. “It’s inconvenient.”
It’s especially inconvenient for people in a working class neighborhood who can’t afford to send mail any other way.
“I have a little small business that I run and the mail is important,” said Pettus. “It’s very important.”
NBC10 spoke to a worker at the Olney Post Office who told us she wasn’t sure why they had ran out.
“At this present time we’re out of stamps,” said the worker. “I believe management is working on it but we don’t have any stamps to sell to the customers today.”
NBC10 called a postal service spokesperson who told us they sometimes run low during their peak holiday season. Not long after our call however, a postal service supervisor arrived at the Olney Post Office with a small box of stamps under his arm and slipped into an employee entrance.
