You won't believe these photos [View All]

[garybeck]

I've been selling and shipping stickers and books on the web for a couple years. I use US Mail exclusively because I live near a post office and it's cheaper than UPS, so it saves the customer money. I've been pretty happy with their service and NEVER has a package been lost or severely damaged (often it takes longer than it should but that's another story). Until now.

Seemingly by coincidence, or not, in the span of two days, I had one package mysteriously disappear and another one destroyed beyond reason.

The package that was lost was significant. It was 25 copies of the Election Truth CD-ROM, which was being mailed to a radio reporter, so it would have delievered the truth to a lot of people.

Then, amazingly, on the same day, it was determined that another package was lost. This was a copy of Fooled Again, Mark Crispin Miller's new (great) book on the same subject. I was about to ship another copy to the customer, when she contacted me to let me know it finally arrived (3 weeks after I shipped it). What was incredible, was the condition of the package. Now I have shipped and received hundreds if not thousands of packages in my life, and I have never seen anything like this. The customer said she took a look at it and couldn't help but laugh. It wasn't like the package was dropped and there is a little dent in the book. It actually looks like the book was ripped in half. and the customer commented that it appeared that the book may have been completely submerged in water at some point as well.

I think pictures are better than words at this point:





Big Hi-res photos here:

http://photobucket.com/albums/a181/livvy2/Fooled%20Again/

The customer commented that she has had packages damaged before, like most of us have, but there is usually an apology note attached. This time, just the book, which was basically torn to pieces, literally. And she did say she's never seen anything damaged this badly. And keep in mind, this is a hardcover book and it was well packaged in bubble wrap.

The paranoid side of me is thinking, with all this domestic spying going on, and reports of people's mail being opened, maybe it's not a coincidence that my first two lost/damaged packages happened at the same time. And it doesn't seem tht any form of normal accident or neglect could cause this type of damage to the book. The customer even commented, it seemed like somone had to do this on purpose. Does someone at the post office not like what the Solar Bus is doing?

The other side keeps saying, it's just a coincidence. Go back to sleep.

But I'll tell you one thing. If something like this happens in the near future, which would be the 3rd incident, I'm going to really wonder what is going on.

gary (the solar bus guy)