Postal Service loses some services during network outage

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A network outage disrupted some services late Thursday and through Friday at the U.S. Postal Service, including package handling at some local post offices, the agency said.

Postal Service email is down, as is the scanning of some packages.

Agency spokeswoman Toni DeLancey said regular mail processing and delivery have not been affected.

She says the outage first occurred Thursday afternoon and workers are trying to fix the problem and restore all service as soon as possible.

"It has nothing to do with any kind of cyber intrusion or anything like that. It's just a technical problem while hardware was being installed," she said.

Another postal spokesman, David Partenheimer, later said the problem continued into Friday evening. "Hardware installation caused the problem. It does take time to get all systems back on line. They have to come back on line in a certain order. So we apologize to our customers who had any problems."

Partenheimer said it is possible the same problem could continue into Saturday.

Scanning operations, including Track & Confirm, continue as normal. The outage was not affecting the acceptance of mail, mail processing or delivery.

"Some Postal Service information technology applications continue to be non-functional today following yesterday's unplanned network outage," the Postal Service said in a message to customers on its website.

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