Speaking Of Slow Mail...

On the 6th of Jan. I sent out a letter to Weiss Expertiizing. I sent it via insured mail.. (Over 200.00 it has to be signed for). As of this morning it hasn't arrived. It only had to travel 100 miles.

I wish now that I had insured it for 600.00 instead of 250.00
It contains a US #1 Used and a Mint part OG 227.

I am in a sad mood. The 250.00 covers my actual costs of purchase, but I will have to wait a long time to get a stamp as nice as that #1 for a low price.

(appropriate condolences would be appreciated)

Looks the delivery is still in the normal time range, so cheer up!

The "catch" is that even if you insured it for $5000; if it's lost, you still have to prove it was worth $5000 -- they won't automatically pay the insured amount :-(

KirkS

Sorry to hear that. I'd want to drive it to them personally if it's only 100 miles away.

Insured coins and stamps have a way of disappearing. There is a reason why Antiques Roadshow experts list insurance values at about twice the cash value.

Problems like this are precisely why I haven't sent a potentially valuable Chinese stamp I have away to the US for expertising. (And as I'm in Australia, this would be international and there would be even more chances of something going wrong!) I simply don't trust the mail these days.

You have my commiserations, stampvirgin. That said, most items seem to arrive EVENTUALLY.

Like Zhang wrote it's still to early to worry. On my side it's rare mail got lost. Out of more than 400 orders ship to me only once one got lost. There is also the one that arrived after being ship 3 months before. The seller reimbursed me and two days after I finally received the stamps. I'm an honest man so I send him back his money. The letter was coming from Latvia. Daniel

I'm just wondering whether express courier services might be more reliable than the regular mail for such things?

as smauggie said, insured mail has a tendency to disappear. not all or even most of the postal workers are honest. A lot of them don't steal because they are afraid of getting caught, not because it is wrong. I have a friend who works for the postal service and that is what he says.

thats a real downer. I mail about 300 packages a year and of those only about 2 go missing and about 20% of those go international I guess I've been lucky.

I had an insured package go to the Philippines it took 3 months, 2 months were spent in customs for some unknown reason. but when we assumed all was lost and were trying to get our money it showed up 2 weeks later.

I've also had a few book rates take 60 days, so we are all crossing our fingers for you...

The post office is for producing stamps for us to collect. Fedex is for delivering anything that is of value.

I think there's probably more accountability with courier services.

With the regular mail, I've had 4 tracking numbers in the last 3 months that didn't appear on the Australia Post website. What's a tracking number for if you can't establish where your item is at any given time?

Hi StampVirigin,

Hang in there. The snow storm nearly crippled the Southeast and Northeast. Here in Atlanta, Georgia we finally got mail on Friday (1 week without mail). Someone said the Post Office trucks could not get from the incoming destination to the local branches. I am sure that everything is alright and the delay is due the the snow.

Jerry B

11 days to got from Maryland to Pennsylvania?
its normally 2 days, it's 140 miles..
I saw a post office sheet that shows it left my towns post office and wen the Baltimore, then disappeared there.
the po does track it internally..

You have my condolences. I know how you feel.
I recently had a parcel sent to me from Estonia.
Approximately 170 Euros of Russian coins and Estonian Banknotes. It was scanned out of Estonia and scanned into Australia and that's the last we saw of that.

Steve

That's not bad, considering a letter from Washington, DC to Washington, DC took two weeks ... and from a US Congressman, no less:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...neral-takes/