It’s always a good idea to purchase insurance for your packages, especially if you’re mailing something valuable. But even having that protection didn’t keep one USPS customer from ending up with broken equipment and no insurance payment to cover the cost of replacing or fixing it.

A woman living in Salt Lake City sold a portable power supply online to a buyer in New York and shipped it with USPS. She wanted to make sure the item got to its destination intact, reports KUTV.com.

“I went and actually bought a very sturdy box, extra packaging, since this is a heavy item, I took great care in packaging it,” she said.

As a fail-safe, she also paid $22 to purchase a $1,600 policy against loss or damage. And wouldn’t you know — the package arrived at its destination damaged.

She contacted the USPS, who told her to ask the buyer to return the package to the local post office for inspection, which he did. He received a stamped letter confirming that he’d left it with a clerk. But when the woman submitted her insurance claim, USPS denied it, saying the package hadn’t been dropped off at the post office.

So she appealed the denial, sending in the stamped letter as proof, but her efforts were rebuffed twice more. The USPS kept telling her they didn’t have her package.

“They’ve damaged my item. They’ve lost my item. But they’re not willing to pay,” she said.

Finally when KUTV’s Get Gephardt reached out to USPS to ask how a package that was lost while in the hands of the USPS could lead to a denied insurance claim, the power supply was miraculously discovered at the post office and shipped back to her.

But despite the fact that the power supply is bent and some of its pieces are shattered, USPS won’t approve her claim: she was told that she only gets three chances to appeal, and she’d used them all up trying to chase down her package… which USPS kept insisting it didn’t have.

Get Gephardt reached out again to USPS to ask why it wouldn’t let her appeal since it was their fault the box was misplaced, which resulted in the denials, but did not receive an answer.

USPS’ bizarre reason for denying insurance claim [KUTV.com]

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