Victoria mailed some textbooks worth $275 in what seemed like secure packaging. The postal service returned the packaging to her, but the textbooks were never seen again. She opted not to insure the package, figuring that no one could do that much damage to heavy hardcover textbooks. She was overly optimistic.

Dear USPS,
Thank you so much for sending me such a nice letter to apologize for any inconvenience you may have caused when you lost the contents of the package I sent through your high-quality shipping service.

Thank you also for sending back the damaged, empty package (as pictured) that looks like it has been drop-kicked by a postman that “went postal” and then thrown into a puddle of water, driven over by said postman followed shortly by him/her tying the package behind his delivery truck and dragging it back to the post office at high speeds on a gravel road and upon arrival immediately sending it through an industrial sized paper shredder then proudly stamping the ridiculously ruined package with “”damaged by the United States Postal Service” and “return to sender”.

Because it is apparent that I am a valued customer and you handle my parcels with such care I would like to inform you that due to the inconvenience that you would like me to kindly understand (of which, for the record, I do not even come close to doing). I am now out $275.00 (plus $4.99 for the package, eighty cents for delivery confirmation and 6 plus dollars for you to ship with quality and care) for the textbooks that were placed in a package that was hand-picked by a post office staff person as the “best” way to send them.

When taking this damaged package back to the same staff person to show her what happened she immediately referred me to her supervisor. The supervisor then looked at it amazed and said “this is the second one of these in two weeks I’ve seen this happen to” followed by a thorough explanation of why he thinks this happened and blaming these, apparently unattended, belt lines that courier the mail through the “system”.

He asked if we had insurance to which we told him no because we thought it would be virtually impossible to ruin these hardcover textbooks (and quite honestly it had to take some work to lose them as well) and did not want to spend an extra 10 (or more??) dollars on insurance since we already spent 6 dollars on shipping alone. He ended the conversation by apologizing for the inconvenience (I’m seeing a trend here) and assuring us there is nothing that can be done.

I asked him if there was a complaint/appeal line that could go higher up the chain since he was basically just trying to get us out the door as quick as possible. He told us there is a complaint number but all that they will do is send him an email and, as we can see, he is already aware of the issue. I then stated “well we will just make sure we do as little business with the Post Office in general as humanly possible and explained to him that we send out a lot of items on a pretty regular basis. What was his reply, you might wonder
? “I don’t blame you one bit”

Thank you for helping me to understand better why USPS is going broke. It’s because of kind, helpful, caring, quality employees such as this man who takes pride in the company he works for and also wants to provide the best customer service possible to help me feel like a valuable customer whose mail is safe in their hands!!

Sincerely, another highly satisfied (and sarcastic) customer

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