Sound Bytes

For the last 15 years, Connecticut post offices have served as collection points for the Toys for Tots program. It's a pretty logical partnership, if you ask me. If you think about it, the postal service has the real estate and offers just about every single town a convenient place to drop off toys.

Low and behold, somewhere along the way, someone rocked the boat. For the first time ever, the grinches at the U.S. Postal Service in Connecticut banned the collections saying that it violated their policy of soliciting to customers. Bah humbug!

The media was all over this, and rightfully so. It was a story that stirred up a lot of emotion in people and hordes of complaints filed into the post offices. The sad thing is that the children and families that benefit from Toys for Tots are the ones who ultimately lose out.

Fast forward to nearly two weeks later and the public outcry has taken full effect. Postal officials have come to their senses and recently announced that the ban has been lifted. So my question is this - did the U.S. Postal Service handle this the right way? Is lifting the ban the right thing to do? I think it was.

I'd like to hear from public relations professionals out there on whether or not the post office made the right choice. If this was your client, what would you have recommended? How would you have handled things?