The US Postal Service may be the only business in America brazen enough to charge its patrons for stealing their goods (at least, I hope so). Or perhaps, it’s not outright theft — just incompetence coupled with a complete lack of accountability.

But for me, it cost $26.16 to lose $1,150 worth of books.

The 64 books were my latest publication, Faces of Combat, PTSD & TBI, which I mailed on Feb. 4 to Madison, Wis., where I’m going to be speaking to Meriter Hospital and the Veterans Administration on my way back from Washington, D.C., where I’ll be the keynote speaker at an advocacy conference in early March hosted by NAADAC and NATAP, our nation’s two largest associations of addiction and substance abuse counselors.

Thirty-two books were neatly packed in each of two cardboard boxes just as they came from the printer. No problem, right?

Five days later, I received the following email from the chaplain at Meriter Hospital:

“The box of 32 books arrived at my office EMPTY! Our mail room women who I trust Pam brought the box up from the mailroom with a US Postal stamp in red on it saying “Contents missing”. It had a nice return address for you…looked like your Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune business card taped on it and a nice label addressed to me. One end of the box was completely missing as if it had been cut open with a box cutter, no cardboard flaps or anything…!! The Illinois publisher label affixed on the outside said Contents: 32.”

And there was no sign at all of the second box.

Off I trekked to the local Post Office, where a clerk named Sherry invited me to fill out a “Mail Recovery Outlook Search Request” form on Feb. 10. Tanna emailed it to the postal recovery center, after which a great silence fell.

Wait a minute … 64 pounds of books fell off a conveyor belt and no one noticed? Or they’re piled in the back of a truck and no one trips over them?

A week later, I made another visit to the Post Office where another clerk, Mary, explained to me that I had no recourse because I didn’t ensure them. They’re just gone, too bad.

Insurance? If I shipped a bail of hay, I wouldn’t ensure it because there’s basically nothing that can happen to it. If it were dropped, or even kicked around the back room by an employee who’s “gone postal,” it wouldn’t break. The only reason for insurance would be so the Post Office won’t lose it. But that’s part of the original shipping fee, isn’t it?

Same principle with books. They’re relatively indestructible. So there’s no reason to insure against breakage. The only reason to insure them would be against postal incompetence — and the shipping fee should cover that.

Now the Post Office is telling me that $1,152 worth of my books disappeared into thin air and they’re not responsible for the loss. To me, that’s a very troubling lack of accountability. It suggests that anything you ship with the US Postal Service can be stolen at will without recourse if you don’t pay an additional fee for insurance. So is this insurance against postal theft? Or is it just insurance against postal incompetence?

More later as this saga unfolds….