Why didn't they just take a dump in the bag?

I'm still waiting for my Ikea catalog. I hope it the outcome won't be this.

i like how even the bag is mangled.

I got a Wired magazine a few months ago that was destroyed by Canada Post. Similar bag however at least the USPS is taking the blame, Canada Post's bag said something along the lines of "we don't know if we got it like this or if we destroyed it"

My worked in a major USPS mail processing plant for 12 years.

1.) No one (in the plant) stole your mail. They have people watching literally everywhere for theft. When things are stolen by postal employees they are nearly always by postal carriers.

2.) You can't read the magazines there - you would get a written warning immediately. So it's not in a toilet stall. They do read the backs of postcards, though.

3.) The flat sorter machines eat an enormous volume of all manner of mail each and every night without exception or prejudice. I also have gotten a baggie of shredded magazine.

4.) I hope no one thinks anything I said here is any defense of the US Postal Service. It was a horrific place to work, and she loathed it every single day she worked there. The money is quite good if you have no degree, though.

That's almost cruel. Are they really just holding the magazine ransom? Sending page by page until you leave 2 million in unmarked bills next to the dumpster by the Walgreens?

Anyone who has ever worked in subscriptions/fulfillment knows that this is the kind of thing that keeps CSR's in a job. Missing/damaged magazines are so commonplace, I'm surprised this is an actual "story."

Just call RS and ask for a replacement copy.

I got one of those plastic baggies with my mail once. The funny part was that it was a piece of junk mail for the previous occupants of my house. It looked like it had been dropped in a swamp though and was nearly degraded.

I once got a package from something I ordered online and only received the actual cardboard, the thing I had ordered online had come out at some point but the USPS continued to deliver a piece of cardboard with my name and address on it to me. Did me a whole helluva lot of good too.

USPS is probably one of the worst run organizations ever. I work for an online store and they lose at least a package out of a shipment every day. Calling them for claim forms is like prying teeth out of a dinosaur. I'm on my 4th call for having them send me claim forms. They say they sent it out every single time, yet we never receive them. A courier service who can't seem to deliver letters... GOOD JOB USPS!

I loathe every second I spend wasting my time with those incompetent idiots at USPS. There's not a one place I hate more. /end rant

I've gotten things like this several times before. I'm mostly just impressed that they still sent me the remnants of my mail. And I guess I do feel that with all the mail that goes out everyday and goes through those wacky machines, a few pieces are bound to be messed up.

A few weeks ago I sold a $50 textbook via Amazon to a woman halfway across country.

Yesterday I rec'd a "WE CARE" bag containing the shredded remains of the empty envelope, no book. ("We care, but not enough to attempt to deliver anything...") Why send that to me?!

I was told by the USPS customer service via the 800 # that anything on the East Coast that gets ejected from its envelope by their conveyor belts o' doom is sent to an Atlanta warehouse, and that I could (HA!) have a chance of recovering the book by writing a letter (no email, no phone - you have buy a stamp from them!) describing the object and what address to send it to.

The address:

Atlanta RC
POB 44161
Atlanta GA 30378

I assume parts of the country have their own centers. I picture the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse...

What's freaky about this is that many of these items are obviously mass produced, so I imagine that you could describe all sorts of things and get some free merch. "Hey, I lost my Harry Potter book... it says "Harry Potter" on the cover... if you see one, that's mine..."

In the meantime had to refund this woman's $. Not happy about that. Yes, I could have bought insurance... but if I did that for every item I sell I'd be spending 15 hours/week tying up a P.O. line and would actually start losing money on some items. Even just buying their mafia-type insurance ("things break...") on higher-ticket items would eat into my profits too much.

Two observations:

- Wouldn't it be MUCH EASIER & CHEAPER to maych my item to the envelope at the site by weight, indicated by the postage, seeing as it was a heavy book and likely the only item on the floor that weighed that much..? Isn't this easier than sending a package mailed from Philadelphia to Chicago to Atlanta, and then assuming a miracle happens & I get it back... resend it up to Phila.?

- If the machines rip open so many packages that you have a center to deal with, YOU NEED DIFFERENT MACHINES.

At that point why even bother sending him the cover? What is he going to do with it look at all the magazine articles he can't read?!

Basically, they send whatever has an address on it. That way, you can contact the sender and let them know if it's damaged too much. In the case of the magazine, he can call and the company will likely send him a new one.

I got that same awesome "sorry, brah" from USPS when a guy I was subleasing to tried to send me a key I forgot. After the key was ripped out of the envelope by one of their sorting machines, I was lucky enough to receive an empty envelope from the USPS and a $500 fee from the place I worked.

"We sincerely regret the damage ... we hope this didn't inconvenience you." Why do businesses bother to make remarks like this? Why, no, it didn't inconvenience me, I really send and receive mail only as a hobby, a time-filler: why would you think not getting my mail would be inconvenient? I was really only receiving it to keep you in business.

It's akin to those inane recordings you hear when you call any company's customer service. "Please hold, your call is important to us, we're experiencing unusually heavy call traffic." Well, no, if my call WERE actually important to you, you'd provide additional call handlers; plus, if after a few months your "unusually heavy call traffic" doesn't abate, then that moves from "unusual" to "typical" and you should handle it appropriately.

Please, just tell me, "You can take it or leave it," I'd appreciate that a bit more than the obvious lies ...

I had this happen to one of my wedding invitations. It was returned to me in shreds. Luckily we were able to figure out it was supposed to go to my now sister-in-law, since she kept saying she hadn't received an invitation.

I sent a bunch of securities to the Federal Reserve the other week for redemption. Stupidly, I used the USPS, certified, request of receipt. Over the next several days I received remnants of mangled federal securities. Fantastic, now I get to fill out mutilated/lost/stolen securities form and go through that rigamarole again. But, in their defense, the USPS did say, WE CARE, in my case as well.

I love the way 99% of people have never had anything like this happen to them, but still they jump on the band wagon bashing USPS. I think they do an amazing amount of work for a very low price and have a higher success rate then any other company would.

@Rider: I think the USPS handles something along the lines of over 50 million pieces of mail a day. I'm guessing if you look at the statistics, they have a low percentage of problems.

@Git Em SteveDave loves this guy-->: The message I got on the envelope after they mangled my Federal securities said that they handle over 202 billion pieces of mail each year and therefore an occasional mishap does happen.

@quizmasterchris:
"I assume parts of the country have their own centers. I picture the Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse..."

Now that's funny, but probably true!

i love usps, they used to get my art supplies cross country for the cheap, my double boxed shoes alwas arrive safe and sound but i have recived a bill from the hospital in a "we care bag" i'm glad they did cause i did'nt.

The USPS deserves a little defense here.
Their mission is to provide universal service at uniform rates. That means they have to deliver a birthday card to your grandmother for the same stamp price without regard to where it goes in the USA. Even if she lives 30 miles out in rural Nebraska. This telling Granny she is SOL on the birthday card, or they can charge what it costs to get it there. USPS can not do either.

Many of the cost cutting has involved mechanizing the process (shredded magazine machines). Your letter carrier is forced into some stupid rules- like filling out an envelope that costs a dime to request you to pay for the three pennies owing on a letter.

In this case- I would rather have the ripped cover or damaged envelope so that I could get another magazine sent, or track down missing mail.

Finally, people working for the USPS are some pretty amazing folks. Often they are the one's reporting a missing or possibly injured elderly person. They deal with dogs, families, children, and are most often seen face of our Federal Government. (or local government for that matter) Who else stops by every day?

I got a bag of shredded paper one time, and my name and or address was no where included in the messy wad of shreds so I have no idea how they knew it was for me? It also smelled like animal pee so I just left it on my front porch for a few weeks to (hopefully) gross out my mail carrier...

Missing sentence correction:

Their mission is to provide universal service at uniform rates. That means they have to deliver a birthday card to your grandmother for the same stamp price without regard to where it goes in the USA. Even if she lives 30 miles out in rural Nebraska. This is not true for Fedex or UPS. They have the option of telling you that Granny is SOL on the birthday card, or they can charge what it costs to get it there. USPS can not do either.

Universal Service at Uniform Rates- Pretty amazing.

When I saw the headline, two questions popped to mind:

1) Did he see his picture on the cover?
2) Did he buy 5 copies for his mother?

@Gizmosmonster: "Universal Service at Uniform Rates- Pretty amazing"

That's really not all that impressive and it means that I'm paying more so you can send your bumblefart Granny a birthday card. Screw that noise.

I got a birthday card from my aunt and uncle in one of these baggies once, and seeing how they normally send a gift card - it was suprisingly empty. But then I didn't want to be selfish and ask "did you send a gift card because the USPS ate it".
I got some junk mail in one of these the other day too.

@dianabanana: What kind of store do you work for? Do you send out 500 pieces a day or something?

In the 3 years my family has been running an online store, with a 50-100 piece a day average, we've come out with 6 things that had to be reported as lost.

Considering the inconceivable amount of material they handle at the prices they do, the percentage of loss is damn well lower than most any other industry, especially delivery.

Oh yeah people still steal mail. I've been receiving "victim notification" correspondence from a federal court in California to keep me updated on the trial of the US postal worker there who was stealing my Gamefly rentals (I live in Wisconsin). They tracked me down because she still had the original envelopes with my mailing address on it. I had totally been convinced that something fishy was going on when games would mysteriously never make it out to me and here comes confirmation of it.

There was also a recent case in Texas where 8 postal workers were charged with theft, this time of Netflix rentals. Sometimes your missing mail is stolen, I can confirm it.

I received the back cover of a magazine once. It had the mailing label (more of a newsletter I guess).

I've had some pretty crappy experiences with the USPS, and despite the fact that I'm sure they've got good employees, I still hate the USPS.

This happened to me once (sort of) with a Netflix envelope. I got one of those "We Care" bags containing the tear-off paper piece of a Netflix envelope. Had to report the disc itself to Netflix as missing in the mail.

@akyiba: good luck! i've ordered the catalog 6 different times (over the course of a year and a half, not like 3 days), and it NEVER comes. so, my boyfriend decided to give it a shot. it came one week later. the irony is that ikea hates me, but will promptly send the catalog to my boyfriend who hates ikea.

If your machine mangles mail on a DAILY basis, it's flawed. Period. I'd say it'd have to have a mangle-rate of less than 0.0001% to be worth anything.

Hey, at least in most cases USPS tries to own up to the problem.

It may not be the most frameable of apologies, but their system tries to get the mail from A to B, and if they can ID damaged mail or parcels, the vast majority of sorting centers will get (well, what's left) to you.

Makes sense why many magazines now go out in polybags vs just a label on a flipping cover.

Been to the central Massachusetts center here; pretty amazing.

One thing I learned (small parcel wise), just by observation, is not to try to stuff something into the "smallest" envelope possible to avoid the next highest rate. Shred, stuck, wedge, pull and tear was the result clearing out the opening to the endorser/sorters.

Thats why I like the small Priority boxes.

I work for the company that makes the flat sorter machine. It sorts fast. It sorts beaucoup flats per hour. 99.9973% of the flats don't get torn up.

But sometimes, they do. It's a fact of life that no
machine is perfect.

On behalf of the manufacturer, I'm sorry.

I betcha that Rolling Stone will send you a new copy.

Do people even read Rolling Stone any more?

A cop-friend of mine was ticked-off when, for the 2nd year in a row, his Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue did not arrive. He complained to his mail carrier about it. Lo-and-behold, the next day he had "a copy". Note that I did not say, "his copy".

You didn't miss much-Metallica on the cover-enough said.

If you call the 800 number for the Post Office, I"m pretty much going to guarantee you that they're not going to be much help with claims. Get the # for your local Post Office (it'll be like pulling teeth, the PO does not want those numbers going out if it can at all be avoided), and call them. Since they're actually in the trenches and working within the system, they'll be much more helpful.

A little secret: USPS CSRs, the ones on the phones, have access to a very limited amount of information. They can get you rate quotes, or tell you what you can and can't send in the mail to Yemen, or try to help you figure out the POs arcane package measuring rules, but they can't quote regulations, and they can't help with claims. And even if you know everything in the universe about claims, you're not allowed to give out any information that isn't in your manual. You can get reprimanded for doing this. If you're having problems with your mail or packages, it's usually better to go to your local PO. (caveat: I worked as a CSR for the USPS several years ago, and the company I worked for lost the contract. Things may have changed.)

@gmoney: Dr. Hook references are the best. Well done.

I had a neighbor who was a postman and he would steal mail. He ended up getting fired but not for stealing mail but because he maced a 15 year old. It took them 2 months to fire him after that.
He stole magazines and rebates. He knew the name and what the envelope looked like of many rebate companies and would cash them at a grocery store.

This just happened to me but with Canada Post and not a magazine. I ordered a handmade, reversible baby sling and all I got was an envelope with the invoice wrapped in a plastic bag that said it was either "received damaged or damaged in processing." So which is it guys? Did YOU lose my sling or did the USPS lose it? Lucky for me the seller is being super nice about the whole thing and sending me a new one without any hassle.

but "WE CARE". that makes up for everything. problem solved.

Yea, USPS bashing is a sport out here. As if Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc., are better run organizations? Right. I am still waiting for the first poster to claim that the government funds the USPS. Even writing this comment most likely won't stop that from happening, but when it does, everyone should congratulate the poster for being a lame brain.

@Ouze:
"They do read the backs of postcards, though."

I bought a novelty postcard one time that said,
"SO...ARE YOU STILL HAVING THOSE FANTASIES ABOUT THE MAILMAN???"

hee heee heee...

I wish they would get in trouble for doing dumb stuff like 1) when it's raining, by all means, don't put my magazines INSIDE the mailbox and close the cover; put them standing up on the outside end of the awning! and 2) giving me someone else's mail all the time!

I suppose you could contact Rolling Stone mag and tell them the post office destroyed your copy of xx issue and they'll send you a new one.

Every once in a while, I get a bag like this with just the tear-off portion of my Netflix envelope - no disk. I've started to report it to Netflix b/c I wonder if someone's stealing the disk.

Another time I got a paperback book and the envelope from half.com in a bag. The envelope and packing list were torn in half, and the book wrenched like the spine had scoliosis. However, I thought that was really cool and the seller gave me a refund, so, ykno, just amusing what mail machines can do to your stuff.

The most entertaining damaged mail I ever received was the label of a netflix disc...which explained why the DVD was looped back to Netflix before I ever received it.

I must say my service was MUCH better when I lived in the boonies and at my college than here in NYC. Yes Mr. Mailman, feel free to shove everything in the box to save time. I mean, I'm LUCKY that the netflix discs haven't been smashed in half yet. Now if the mailman had OCD, this would not be a problem.

@Gizmosmonster: Having dealt with the post in other countries, I can say that the USPS is fantastic. Things get where they need to go relatively quickly, and there's no need to send a trailing letter after a package saying "Hey did you get my package?" It's way better than Kazakhstan, Italy, or Spain.