After our story about USPS losing a reader’s five insured computers then only valuing them at $74 generated a lot of response (and turned into a vowel-less debate on health care), a couple readers sent us the contact info for the insurance agent who denied our reader’s request.

One tipster writes:

I don’t want to bore you with all the details, but basically the USPS wanted to confiscate an iMac rather than pay for the repair I had bought off of eBay that arrived at my house with a cracked screen. I spent, literally, 30 hours dealing with the St. Louis office postal insurer’s office trying to get someone to answer my questions about why they weren’t abiding by the very regulations that they post on the web in regards to insurance claims. The good news, though, is that I actually won. I fought the MAN and actually won, despite all the shenanigans they pulled on me. The claims appeals supervisors never contacted me back, nor did the consumer advocate (locally or at the national level). What finally got a response, and what reminded me of all this nonsense, was that I managed to guess Autria Finley’s email address which was never included on any of the form letter correspondence that I received from them. I emailed her and got an almost immediate judgment on the case. The underling claims adjuster had not forwarded any of my requests for review to her. I also never got a direct phone number until I reached her through email, and had to go through the voice mail hell each time I tried to reach the claims adjuster. The best part of the story was about two months after my check arrived for the repair, and post office had released the computer back to me, I received a call from the USPS California accounting department stating that I had been paid in error despite the letter stating otherwise from the claims department. I told the adjuster in no uncertain terms that he was wrong, and that I had the emails and letter from Ms. Finley detailing the claim. He asked me for her phone number, and it was at that point I realized that even if you work for USPS, you can’t get these people’s contact information.

We love that even employees of the post office don’t have contact info for the higher-ups. Anyway, the email address for Autria Finley is afinley@email.usps.gov. We were about to send this along to Pedro when he emailed us to say:

I woke up just a short while ago to your mail and called my friend to let him know it was posted. He just got a from a Michelle Williams with the usps saying they would honor the claim in full. We’re thrilled. Thanks again for all yours and the readers help! I will let you know once it’s actually paid out. As you can imagine this is a huge weight off our shoulders.

Hooray for the power of the internet. If you’ve experienced similar problems with USPS and denied insurance claims (and judging from our emails, you have), try getting in touch with Ms. Finley to see if that can help your claim out.

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