There’s good news – sorta – on the lost book front. The U.S. Postal Service found two thirds of them, along with the shredded remains of a sturdy cardboard box, in the bowels of the Chicago Bulk Mail Processing Facility and sent them back to me in a replacement box that was – literally – coming apart at the seams when it arrived at the Great Falls Post Office.
But most of the books were in relatively good shaped, and those that weren’t were my responsibility because I didn’t insure them.
Finding and returning the books took the Postal Service two months.
And it refunded the postal fee for the delivery it didn’t make, which I thought was only fair.
What I found unfair was their refusal to reimburse me for the books that they couldn’t account for, i.e. that they lost.
“Regrettably, the Postal Service cannot honor any claim for consequential expenses incurred because of delayed or lost mail,” Postmaster David Chiavaras wrote me.
What????
As part of my job, I head out of town on occasion to cover breaking news stories, and I take an office laptop computer with me to file copy from remote locations. If I came back without it one day and told our publisher that I was not responsible for delayed or lost computers, how far do you think that would get?
The postmaster wrote me: “I realize that my explanation and response may not meet your satisfaction. I still hold out hope that you will give us another chance to redeem ourselves to meet your future mailing needs.”
Wrong.
Let me compare the Postal Service lack of accountability with a parallel problem I had this month.
One of our local dry cleaners lost a pair of my slacks, apparently sending them home with another customer as part of another order. The shop owner apologized and suggested waiting a week to see whether they would be returned. After a week, the slacks were still missing, and the owner reimbursed me $50 to pay for replacing them. And these slacks weren’t even insured.
I responded to the postmaster: “I will continue to do business with that dry cleaner because I approve of his sense of responsibility. I will no longer send packages with the U.S. Postal Service because I disapprove of your lack of ethics.”
As private businesses, neither FedEx nor UPS can afford to alienate their customers, so that’s where I’ll be doing my future business.