My Fellow Luthiers, Musical Instrument Dealers, Citizens of the world: The following is the reason I never ship anything through the U.S. Post office, ever:

Back on June 10^th of 2008 I went to the post office in Chuckatuck, Virginia (in the City of Suffolk) and while there, shipped a gold plated Gibson tone ring to an address in Maine. I had packaged it properly and insured it for the appropriate amount and sent it from Virginia via Priority mail, but it never arrived.

This was my first experience with the U.S. Mail losing anything, but I had all of my receipts and paperwork and thought that although losing the tone ring was annoying, there wasn’t anything to worry about. I sent my fellow banjo builder a personal check for the amount he paid for the tone ring and proceeded to submit the proper paperwork on my end for reimbursement for the lost item.

I waited 30 days from the shipping date to make sure it didn’t turn up before submitting the claim and all seemed right with the world.

A month passes without word, call or check … so I call the toll free, customer no-service number. They said that it was in review and that sometimes it takes 6 or 8 weeks before the paperwork is processed. That was in August, and I still don’t have a check!

Should I start calling them every week and worry the hell out of them? Should I just wait? Should I give up like they want, or keep wasting my time and cell phone minutes, neither of which will I be compensated for or this would have cost them WAY more than the amount of the tone ring. 

I have been very cordial and patient; it just seems that this should not be normal.  I have been told, or at least lead to believe, that the claims are handled by a contractor, not the United States Postal Service.

To this day I am awaiting payment.  Why?

 I wonder why is it that if we owe the government anything, they want it NOW and with interest, but if they owe us something it is a matter of waiting on the proper procedures, paperwork and an incompetent 3^rd party contractor with pretentious employees to get to it when they get to it?  I say this with a smile and a nice cup of coffee … in case there was any doubt.

***The check finally came on 12/24/2008.  6 months, 14 days, 11 phone calls and a rough total of 17 hours of my life used up attempting to deal with this issue.** 

Merry Christmas Benjamin Franklin ... your child has gone far, far astray.

This article has been read by people since I posted it on 10/27/2008