getting art stolen from your doorstep, etc 1 1

[wurstisart]

Unfortunately I have a very recent story regarding lost / stolen artwork.

I had bought a Spider-Man strip on eBay. See pictures below. 

The shipping address is a business adress and there is no Saturday delivery. The postal office is aware of this, regardless somehow the postal office apparently delivered it on a Saturday. What exactly happened, who knows. It is assumed that they had the package on a stack of packages that they delivered on that Saturday to a different business. Fact is however, that my package never showed up.

To everyone in the Philadelphia area and suburbs, please if you get this piece offered, shoot me a message. 

It is not a high value item, but still very frustrating.

[Will_K]

tldr... I filed complaints with USPS.  And it seems independently of that, my item did show up.  Whoever received the item seems to have returned it to USPS.

An update... and the conclusion...

I filed a "find my missing mail" request on usps.com.  I could not find a link on usps.com to file a formal mail theft report with the US Postal Inspector.  But if you google "united states postal inspector", you'll find their website.  From there you can click through and you find yourself back on usps.com.  Anyway, I filled in the pertinent information to report mail theft.  

Within a week, I received an e-mail asking to rate their response.  Since I hadn't received any responses or acknowledgements, I assumed it was spam.  A week later, I received another e-mail to rate their response. Even though still I hadn't received a response. 

I discovered the e-mails were related to my "find my missing mail" request, not the mail theft report.

So I figure, if they wanted a review I might as well give them one.  It was a negative one.  On a scale of 1 to 5, it was 1.  To explain the ranking, I indicated that they wanted me to rate their response but they had not even responded.

As mentioned above, my item was a blank sketch cover.  I didn't mention that it was an ebay purchase.  So far, the ebay seller was great (e.g responding to my e-mails and doing legwork on her side, going to her local Post Office).  Even though I hadn't received my item, I posted positive feedback.

A couple days after giving USPS my negative review, I got an "insufficient search request data" email from USPS.  They wanted to know the size of the package, if the item was packed loosely, if the label was printed or handwritten.

Since I didn't have that information, I had to ask the ebay seller.  So I followed up with the seller again.  Basically, she decided it wasn't worth the hassle to keep responding to me and even though she was not required to, she refunded my payment.  I responded that I appreciated the refund but I'd still continue to followup with USPS.  

So I didn't get any more info from the seller but I did provide additional data, the rough dimensions of a package for a comic book.  And I mentioned my case number from the report to the US Postal Inspector.  

About a week and half later, I'm picking up packages from the Post Office.  I'm counting the items and there seems to be an extra one.  It turns out, I got the sketch cover.  The package was opened but then taped shut.  I guess, somehow, someone was given my item (by accident ?).  And finally got around to giving it back (or whatever) to the Post Office.

Still, no response from the US Postal Inspector.  I updated the "missing mail" report to indicate the item was finally delivered.  If my item was given away at the Post Office, maybe the Postal Inspector haven't gotten around to looking at the video.  If my item was delivered by a mail carrier, that was definitely a big mistake.  I figure the Postal Inspector is spending their energies on fentanyl smuggling.  

For some weird reason, PayPal no longer reports my payment or the refund.  Maybe because both transactions occurred within a 1 month period.  Keeping with ebay's policies, I don't have the seller's e-mail address.  I'm not going to contact her through ebay but since I have her physical address, I'll just send her a check for the comic.

The Post Office by my mother has a sign that says they check IDs, I haven't noticed a similar sign at my Post Office.  Anyway, I'll keep blocking the window in my PO Box so noone can tell if I have a yellow card.  My Post Office still does not ask for my ID when picking up packages.  

 

 

Edited May 2, 2019 by Will_K