The US Postal Service lost five new Lenovo laptops that Pedro’s friend bought and shipped to him. Pedro expected that this might happen, so he wisely insured the package for $3,000. After stalling for about two months, USPS finally agreed to pay his insurance claim, but reduced the payment, claiming his merchandise was only worth $74.

Pedro writes:

In February I had a friend in Orlando ship me a large box of 5 brand-new Lenovo R500’s I had him pick up for me. He insured the shipment for $3,000 and sent it parcel-post to me in San Diego. They told us a delivery time of 7-9 days would be an approximate timeframe, which came and went without a package in sight. All the while I’m tracking the package and its status was never changed from: PACKAGE ACCEPTED ORLANDO, FL. I called several times before the 7-9 days and was only told to wait the 7-9 days. After 9 days had passed I was told it could take up to 14 days. I spoke to several agents at the 800-ASK-USPS number, my local post office and the Orlando, FL post office and got different information from every single place. After 21 days my friend was allowed to fill out an insurance claim, which he did, which was supposed to be processed immediately, yet took another week to be sent from the Orlando PO to their insurance department. Another four weeks later we received the gift of the attached letter stating that they decided to award us $112.14 of the $3,000 we insured the package for. We’re in the process of appealing but I’m appalled at the $112.14 price-tag for my lost computers. It’s unreal.

Pedro included scans of the receipt showing he bought $3,000 worth of insurance on the package, as well as the letter from USPS offering him $74 for the package and $38.14 for postage.

We hope your appeal works out, Pedro. If it doesn’t, consider alerting the leadership at USPS. We couldn’t find their email addresses (maybe they view it as competition) but we’re guessing a letter would reach them. Unless they lose it.

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