The post office at Santa Clara’s Franklin Square has been without internet service for more than a week and there’s no sign yet of when the problem will be fixed.
According to the United States Postal Service (USPS), the trouble initially started when service technicians located several damaged cables near the post office, affecting the internet service to the office.
While a fix was supposed to be in place by July 24, things did not go as planned.
“The damage to the cables was substantial,” said Kristian Uppal of the USPS. “The matter has been escalated by the Post Office for priority resolution and they’ve been actively working with the provider for an expedited solution.”
The Weekly has been in touch with the service provider, Verizon, for clarification on exactly what went wrong. Verizon’s media department says it has received no reports of long-term service outages in the area.
However, the post office says it has been without the internet since at least July 18. There are signs on the windows that read, “Sorry cash only, at this time internet is down.”
“The impact has affected the ability for the office to process credit and debit transactions so they are having to accept only cash at this time,” confirmed Uppal. “The Post Office has not reduced their services available, however the processing time has been impacted by the internet connection speed.”
“The Postmaster has worked diligently on getting this matter resolved, and of course we do apologize for the inconvenience caused,” said Uppal.
For their part, most customers have been understanding; the signs outside of the post office give them ample warning and most of the customers we talked to say they were prepared to pay cash.
Update: The post office has internet as of July 26.