Postal Error Delays 288,000 Pension Checks for 2 Weeks

The checks are in the mail.

Really.

And for 288,000 retirees desperately awaiting their pensions, that’s exactly the problem. The August checks have been in the mail for nearly two weeks now, thanks to a Postal Service error in Scranton, Pa., where the checks are printed for the Prudential companies, which administer pension funds for unions and companies throughout the United States.

“This is one of the worst crises we’ve had in 30 years,” said Joseph Bonanno, vice president of the Prudential Asset Management Co. of Woodland Hills, which is responsible for 92,000 retired Teamsters.

So many people have called to find out what happened to their monthly payments, he said, that Prudential assigned 15 people to answer phone complaints full time.

The checks, totaling more than $100 million, got held up because a postal worker accidentally dispatched them to a third-class mail site, Bonanno said. So instead of going first class by air, the checks--including those to retirees from Stanford University, the Auto Club of Southern California and a host of other companies--have been traveling by train, truck and even boat to their destinations.

“The first-class (mail) containers were inadvertently dispatched to the Philadelphia Bulk Mail Center,” Scranton Postmaster Timothy S. Primerano wrote to Bonanno. From there, he said, they were “incorrectly dispatched via rail car and tractor-trailer to points around the country.”

To make matters worse, checks to pensioners in Hawaii were sent by container ship, Bonanno said. And whereas some mainland pensioners have already begun to receive the payments they expected more than a week ago, retirees in Hawaii probably will not get paid until next week, he said.

The checks--which under normal circumstances would have arrived July 29--are now so tardy that some retirees have missed rent and loan payments.

“When you become older, this kind of thing can really throw you for a loop,” said a retired Teamster.

Another said he was behind in his rent because of the mix-up.

“I depend on it,” he said of his pension check. “I live from month to month.”

Bonanno said Prudential plans to send out September checks early. And Teamsters pensioners who do not believe the check is really in the mail, he said, can come to his office and pick one up in person.