"It was nothing less than shocking," he added.
On Nov. 24, Hamilton Press mailed the $15,000 print job, wrapped in plastic on pallets, at the Bellmawr, Camden County, mail center, part of the beleaguered Philadelphia mail-processing system. The postage came to $6,000, Clark said.
Three weeks later, more than 1,500 of the "new member" packets for a Tarrytown, N.Y., health-care plan were returned damaged, he said.
"Handbooks were strewn loosely and separated from their envelopes," Clark said. The "welcome" letters addressed to specific recipients exposed personal information, a violation of federal regulations. And the mailing was not completed during the federally mandated time frame.
The 9-by-12-inch manila envelopes also contained a handbook and directory of medical providers that was "damaged beyond future use," he said.
Shrink-wrapped pallets of envelopes were mailed at the Bellmawr center but were returned from bulk-mail centers in Jersey City, N.J., and Northeast Philadelphia.
Because Hamilton Press cannot determine who received remaining packets, the entire job must be reprinted and remailed, Clark said.
He said Hamilton Press has used materials and mailing procedures recommended by the Postal Service since 2002.
But postal investigator Richard Spanburgh blamed weak envelopes for Clark's ordeal.
In a USPS report on the problem, Spanburgh wrote: "The paperstock used is not strong enough for these white parcels to be worked on our machines. The bundles sorter APPS machine is an option, but mail dropping into direct containers still breaks paper envelopes. Our rewrap area is repairing these parcels now."
According to postal workers at the Southwest Philadelphia processing plant, the APPS (automatic package-processing system) machine handles small parcels but throws off too many rejects, which then must be processed manually.
