John at Needcoffee.com writes that he’s come to expect the occasional “damaged in transit” theft of items from packages he ships or receives, at least through the U.S Postal Service. With private carriers, however, he notes that he’s always had better luck. But last week he opened a box of DVDs shipped to him via FedEx to discover a rusty can of $5 house paint.

I opened a box I received from FedEx and pulled out of a couple of DVDs and then saw what looked like a rusty lid of something. At first, I thought nothing of it, since you can get DVDs packaged in all kinds of weird shit. I thought it might have been a fake film canister of some sort or…something. In retrospect, it might have been the Limited Edition Paint Can “This Old House: The Complete Series.” But when I pulled it out I saw it was what you’re seeing up there: an authentic $4.99 rusty gallon can of Satinwood Interior Latex Flat Wall Paint. (And please don’t mock the wallpaper, it came with the house.)

I called the sender of the package and said, “What’s with sending me a can of paint?”

He said, “What the hell are you talking about: a can of paint?” And you can guess where the conversation went from there.

It took a while for John to track down someone from FedEx to investigate, but apparently they’re on the case now:

Regardless, the claims process is supposed to be underway, and FedEx Claims was helpful when I got them on the line–after they inexplicably transferred me to somebody who worked somewhere else within the company and had no idea why I was suddenly on their phone and then…on the second call they transferred me into their internal phonemail system, where I was prompted for my mailbox number. But anyway, the third call was fine. Let’s just see how they react to this.

“Indiana Jones and the Satinwood Latex Flat Wall Paint” [Needcoffee.com]

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