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Woman receives help from utility company after RTV6 calls

mailbox broken.PNG
Posted at 5:36 PM, May 17, 2019
and last updated 2019-05-20 23:18:37-04

INDIANAPOLIS — A woman says that because of where a utility company buried a cable line, she hasn't been able to replace her damaged mailbox, and hasn't been able to send mail for months.

It's been a difficult past few months for Marlene Woodcock. Her husband's been very sick and almost died.

"He came down with pneumonia and was at death's door, and I had to decide whether to put him on life-support or not," Woodcock said.

While going through this, someone must've made the turn too tight in her neighborhood and hit her mailbox, nearly knocking it over.

"I've hired the mailbox company to replace it. It's on order. And they said they won't do anything, though, until I get the cable moved," Woodcock said.

The Post Office wants the mailbox to be replaced so her mail can be safely secured. But, no one is willing to replace it because of a Comcast, Xfinity cable line that was recently buried underneath in the wintertime.

"I mean you can see the little path right around there, where they went with it," Woodcock said. "And the locator, they came out to locate the line and said they're not supposed to do that."

The locators are afraid they'll hit the line and have to pay up.

"There's no way that anyone wants to take that out and be responsible for the consequences," Woodcock said.

The line is only about two inches away from the mailbox. The homeowners have done what they could. Putting a metal strip and some string to hold it up, but the mailbox is still about to fall over.

"The post office told me that there's really no other place else to put my mailbox, but he had no authority to require Comcast to come out and move his cable," Woodcock said.

RTV6 reached out to Comcast.

Crews went by and told RTV6 they're now going to move the line two feet back from the mailbox for Woodcock and will have this problem fixed within 48 hours.

One of the newsroom's favorite parts of the job is the fact that RTV6 can get things done when you feel like your voice isn't being heard.

If you have a problem, connect with us via email at workingforyou@rtv6.com and we will see what we can do.