Effective Saturday, all residents who live in the 61820 and 61821 zip codes will now have to pick up their missed mail and held packages at the 600 N. Neil St. post office, located in downtown Champaign.
Residents living in the 61820 zip code had used the 600 N. Neil St. location all along, however, the changes will shift all of the residents living in the 61821 zip code to the new location. Residents in 61821 had previously picked up mail at the 2001 N. Mattis Ave. location.
The Mattis Ave. location will still continue to serve those who live in the 61822 zip code.
According to Jason Stalter, customer services manager at the 600 N. Neil St. post office, the changes will help reduce costs on gas mileage.
“By centralizing the location of held mail, we can efficiently conserve funds on mileage for our delivery vehicles,” Stalter said. “The changes also help consolidate operations in the post office as well.”
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Services for post office box customers are not affected by the changes.
Students are not pleased with the USPS’ mail pickup service. Marco Pineda, freshman in Business, said he is unhappy with the pickup location.
“Whenever I miss mail, I have to travel really far in order to go pick it up,” Pineda said. “It would be so much more convenient if mail pickup was located at the Green Street location, since I can walk there in less than 10 minutes. I don’t have a car and the walk to the Neil Street post office is way too far.”
Mail and package pickup can only be held at locations with enough space to hold thousands of letters and packages. Locations such as the Neil Street and the Mattis Ave. offices have large enough facilities to house many packages, thus, the reason they are the only places where you can pickup your held mail, according to Stalter.
The Green Street location will likely never hold missed mail due to the lack of size of the facility.
Justin Huie, a sophomore in Engineering, is also displeased with the location change.
“It’s actually a lot easier for me to get to the Mattis Ave. post office since I live off campus,” Huie said. “Now I am going to have to figure out a way to get to the Neil Street location since I tend to order a lot of stuff online.”
