UAlbany Spent Half a Million on Parcel Lockers: Why Do We Still Need More?

By Maurice Burbridge | November 17, 2025 

Mail Services director Steve Lampedusa standing in front of the parcel lockers.

                   Photo Credit: Maurice Burbridge | The ASP

A lot has changed since Steve Lampedusa took the reins of Mail Services in 2016. Despite these changes, including the addition of parcel lockers, complaints persist about students having to wait longer than they would like to pick up their packages.

When Lampedusa started, the volume of packages was about 70,000 a year, including the Downtown and Health Sciences campuses. Mail Service hours were limited.

“12 to five Monday through Friday. That's it,” Lampedusa said.

Looking through forums, Lampedusa recognized the growing trend of parcel lockers at universities, but UAlbany parcel lockers ultimately were not installed until March 2023.

“If it wasn't for COVID, we would have got the lockers earlier,” Lampedusa said. “But COVID delayed things for obvious reasons.”

According to Lampedusa, the approximately 920 lockers, built for half a million dollars, were based on the volume of 150,000 packages in 2021. This was almost half of the number of packages recorded in 2024.

As casual shopping becomes an increasingly online endeavor for students, this number continues to increase– Lampedusa predicts a volume of nearly 400,000 packages this year.

It would be assumed that building more parcel lockers would accommodate the increasing number of packages. But as Lampedusa puts it, there’s a lot of “red tape.”

Lampedusa would have to find another location, as in the basement of Catskill, where Mail Services is located, there is not any more room to install additional parcel lockers.

Since the lockers have been introduced, the overwhelming majority of mail addressed to students living on campus is put in a locker, and made available for pick-up, as soon as possible.

“The main things that have to happen is a student has their first and last name on the item– it could be their preferred name as well, as long as they have the mail reference number. The mail reference number is the fingerprint,” Lampedusa explained.

But, as Lampedusa exemplifies, in some cases the process can be delayed or adjusted. For example, if it's a particularly busy time, like the beginning of the semester.

“Sometimes we'll have both systems [parcel lockers and window pickups] going because we just want to alleviate the stress of the packages, and try to turn them over the best we can,” Lampedusa explained.

If students are slow to pick up packages, that will reflect in how quickly new ones are put in.

“I would throw it on the students a little bit on why packages are not being picked up. So it's interesting that students are concerned by it. And I think the concern is legitimate. I'm not discrediting their concern,” Lampedusa said. “Forget the more lockers. The turnaround time of packages being picked up is not as quick as we would like.”

According to Lampedusa, 20-25% of the time, student locker packages are not picked up in 48 hours– which is up to 230 lockers that could’ve been used more than once in that timeframe, if people picked them up quicker.

Lampedusa has spoken to at least 15 other campuses with lockers who immediately return mail not picked up timely, but he doesn’t have the heart. So he writes personalized emails to every single student who fails to pick up their mail in 48 business hours, not only to give them a final chance, but so there’s a paper trail that they were contacted.

Lampedusa explained, “I'd say, ‘David, pick it up today, it's going to be returned’. We wait about three days. Absolutely. So I say they typically have like five business days before returning.”

Lampedusa said that most packages are picked up promptly after hours. If the staff fill every single locker at 3 p.m., by 7 a.m. the next morning about 500 lockers will be available.

Mail Services staff, including students and Lampedusa himself, have come after hours to transfer items from the staging area to newly empty lockers to quicken the turnaround. 

During certain times of the year (Halloween, Amazon Prime Day, Valentine’s Day, the holidays, the beginning of the semester, etc.) are blackout dates– where Mail Services won’t approve staff vacation time, and student staff are offered extra hours, because of the high volume of incoming packages.

The lockers have resulted in a decrease in unretrieved mail, Lampedusa ultimately considering the lockers a success.

“We can give students more hours of service; meet them where they’re at, because we leave at three, and it’s the way they live,” he said. “Technology is comfortable for them.”