Clerk’s Office Mailing 72,000 Postcards To Select Drivers

Safe to say, the City Clerk’s office was a tad embarrassed back in early June.

After getting the city sticker season off to a fast and healthy start with record breaking online sales, something happened.

Reports of city stickers that wouldn’t stick to car windshields started trickling in. The trickle turned into a flood and after some quick checking, the Clerk’s office realized they had a bit of a fiasco on their hands. An aggressive campaign to alert drivers of free replacements for defective city stickers ensued, a two week extension of the grace period was announced, and so far, over 55,000 (approximately 5% of total sales) city stickers have been replaced since mid-June.

But now, concerned some drivers who unwittingly received a defective sticker and hadn’t heard about issue and/or the free replacement policy, the Clerk’s office is reaching out again to a select number of city drivers with a postcard mailing.

“Our initial sales from the first batch were about 130,000 to 150,000 stickers,” explains Kristine Williams, spokesperson for the City Clerk’s office. “We’re issuing a little more than 72,000 postcards over the next month. Those postcards are going to anyone who bought a sticker in the first batch and hasn’t received a replacement.”

Even though the sticker vendor, SecureMark Decal of Chicago, seemingly solved the adhesive problem by quickly replacing the first batch of faulty city stickers, newer city stickers having adhesion problems are still being reported.

One driver, who purchased his city sticker on July 30th, couldn’t get his city sticker to stay on his windshield.

“I bought mine the last day of city sticker sales right at City Hall,” says Mark Smithvivas. “And my city sticker wouldn’t stick.”

While Williams feels the majority of the adhesive problem was isolated to the first batch of stickers, she wants drivers to know anyone with a defective city sticker is entitled to have it replaced at no charge.

“If anyone at any time bought a sticker that isn’t adhering well we want to replace their sticker either in person or via mail,” says Williams. “We do believe that the vast majority of stickers sold that had insufficient adhesive were from our first batch of stickers sold in late May/early June.”

The Clerk’s office will replace any faulty city stickers for free. Drivers can e-mail the City Clerk’s office at: cityclerk@cityofchicago.org or call 312-742-9200. Replacements will be sent in the mail.

Or, if you prefer, you can get your city sticker replaced in person at any Chicago City Clerk office location.