An internet outage at the post office in Santa Clara’s Franklin Square has finally been resolved.
“There was a service interruption beginning on July 17 that was caused by damage to a cable that supports the Post Office, only,” said Jeannine Brew Braggs of Verizon, the internet service provider for the Post Office at Franklin Square. “The cause of the damage cable is unknown. Service has been restored.”
The United States Postal Service (USPS) confirmed that service was restored on the afternoon of July 25.
“The cause of the network reduction was due to several damaged cables located in a manhole accessed area near the Post Office,” said Kristina Uppal of the USPS. “The extent of the damage to the cables was found to be significant and the Post Office escalated this matter to the service provider as a priority for resolution.”
The Postal Service worked with Verizon for several days to get the internet back up and running.
For five and a half business days, the post office could not accept credit card or debit card transactions but could carry out all services. During the outage, employees put signs on the windows and in the store that read, “Sorry cash only, at this time internet is down.”
“The Post Office at Franklin Mall had not limited available services or closed during this network reduction, however they were only able to accept only cash transactions as the credit and debit was not able to be operated with this network impact,” said Uppal. “Customers were advised for credit and debit purposes they may go to any of the [other post office] locations.”
Because of the outage transactions at the post office did run a little slower, but employees did the best they could.
For their part, customers were understanding and the signs outside the post office gave them ample warning. Many customers we talked to had cash to pay for their transaction or prepaid shipping labels so there was no problem.
“The Santa Clara Postmaster has worked diligently to ensure that this issue was resolved as quickly as possible,” said Uppal “We’re happy to be back to providing fast and steady service at the Franklin Mall Post Office and customers may feel free to come by with their debit and credit cards from today onward.”
During the outage, the Postal Service advised customers to go to the Mission Santa Clara Office at 1050 Kiely Blvd. or the CPU Mailing Service at 65 Washington St. Both offices are less than two miles away from the Franklin Square location.
