Auction Purchase Destroyed In Mail, Is Anyone Liable?

This happened in January but it's been nagging me since. I bought some stamps on 'Stamps2Go' paid with Paypal. What I got in the mail was about 2/3 of a heavy cardboard photo envelope. It was addressed in the LR corner so that was intact but the rest was a disaster. Contents were a total loss. It looked to me that someone had just seized the envelope and ripped it open without any thought of th contents.

I wound up sending it back to the seller who gave me a credit of 50% of what I paid. He said he took it to is local POin NJ and they said it was not anything done by machinery. It was done by a human at some point.

I got to thinking if this mailing got put in the wrong mailbox. We have had an epidemic of that in my area. We have one set of neighbors in particular that always seem to get our mail. We have had credit card statements put in our box that clearly have been opened by someone, that sort of thing. They are a young couple- interesting folks- in nice weather they sit on their front porch and smoke pot. That is their business but it sort of colors my impression of them. I can easily see the guy going through a pile of mail, tearing stuff open and then doing that on a philatelic mailing and damaged stamps come tumbling out. He was maybe too embarrassed to hand deliver it to us and afraid he'd destroyed our property(he did).

It is too late to look into this now but- in the future- would there have been any liability here? The more I look at it it seems nobody can be held accountable other than the carrier who messed up, and he wouldn't have known at the time.

I ask for the future because I buy a lot of stamps by mail. On larger orders I know I'd be smart of pay for registration. Anyone else have problems with postal misadventures like this?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Of course there's liability. You suffered a loss, and someone else was the cause. But your problem is proof.

I've had parcels stolen from the front porch. I solved that problem long ago by having everything shipped to my office. You need a PO box or some other alternate receiving location.

To some extent, you got off easy. Years ago when I owned rural property, every summer on some hot weekend night when there was nothing to do, the local head-bangers would come by at 2AM in a pickup and swat the entire mailbox off its post with a baseball bat. After repairing it 3 successive years, I had a mason build a solid brick pillar and encased the box in it. No more head-bangers.

Stamps: sorry about your misfortune. I agree with cjpalermo. I've had a post office box since I moved to the Denver area almost 36 years ago. Back then, it was common mail racks for periodicals, etc., below the tiny mailboxes in the apartment complex clubrooms. Last 20+ years, it's been a curbside mail box in front of my house. For safety and privacy reasons, I get virtually all important mail at the p.o. box. I don't even check the home mailbox more than a couple times a week for the usual junk advertising flyers. Occasional parcels; like the one I got this morning via Fed-Ex from Rasdale Stamps in suburban Chicago; usually aren't left on the porch due to signature requirements.

Gee ---go over there and drag that dope head to the ground and then do a little GROUND and POUND ,then come on here and tell us what color his blood is .Problem solved.

floortrader...obviously when you bleed the color is not red..Gee!

I get my mail sent to a P.O. box. The post office will also accept Fedex and UPS and most other carriers. Just fill out a card. No more undelivered or missing packages.

I know getting to a P.O. in urban areas can be difficult so try a private mailing center.

From the original post:




Not for overseas orders arriving via New York City. There are persistent problems with lost or stolen foreign registered mail arriving in the US via New York. This is well documented in this forum. I believe the group consensus was that senders from Europe should use ordinary first-class mail or a private courier service.

I have a box at a UPS Mail Store. Mail theft is rife here in the Land of Enchantment. Of course, that does nothing to stop a package getting kipped in-route.

Shipping losses are the responsibility of the seller. If in doubt purchase insurance. However, once the tracking says an item is delivered, it will be difficult to prove non-delivery. In that case, ebay will assign responsibility to the buyer - right or wrong, ebay doesn't care.

After 2000 purchases from Nth America, Lost in transit =0

Damaged
1 x must have became wet/damp, dried out in transit damage to gum circa $12
1 x Package circa $60 delivered dripping with Milk, someone must have ordered milk through the mail. Contents packaged well, stamps untouched.

I consider myself fortunate, and take the hits on the chin.

Should have filled the original mail box with concrete, a bat in hand impacting a concrete filled mailbox in a pickem up truck going 30 mph has awesome results. Ever split the handle on a bat on a fastball? multiply that by a thousand

I had once only the face of an envelope from France delivered without the rest.

The other time a package with stamps in it, mailed from Texas, was delivered torn and full of mud, with tire tracks all over it — somebody drove over it. Stamps inside were not damaged by some miracle.

Any complains in the local post office produce indifferent shrugging and mumbling "They must have done it in France" or something of that sort.

We have a neighborhood web site with a forum. Once I figured out what must have happened I posted on there about it, I did not mention anything about stamps, just that it was some 'merchandise' that got destroyed. I just said that with all the mis-delivery of mail we have, everyone needs to be careful not to damage other folks stuff without looking at who it is addressed to. The suspect neighbors post on there. I'm pretty sure they saw it.

I haven't had anything near this in 50 years of buying stamps by mail.

Not really missing mail situation but close.

Some 20 years ago in our little community here we all once a day would go to our local PO to get our mail. No worries with this system a lot of socialising would take place etc.

Then one day Auspost made a decision that a postie would deliver all the island mail to the addressed it was mailed too. No dialogue about the change to having the need of a mail box out the front of your house.

It took some time for this situation to sort its self out. The biggest trouble at 1st was wet mail and mail that blown away in the wind as it would not fit under the front door.

We live in a great spot on our island. Nobody hassels nobody....

I'm lucky that my mail delivery is reliable and I work from home; I usually see the mailman coming out my office window and I'll often go out to meet him. It's not just mail thieves I'd be worried about, but too long outside on a rainy or snowy day could potentially make mint stamps a bit sticky, even if the package itself doesn't get wet directly. Oh, and if I know I'm getting stamps that day, I'm like a kid waiting for Santa Claus to come, so the mail definitely doesn't stay in the box very long those days. If I wasn't able to bring my mail inside right away like that, I'd definitely get a PO box, for the peace of mind as much as anything else.

IMHO, to make a long story short. If I had been the seller of this item, the buyer would have received a 100% refund. He bought it, paid for it, I failed (though not my fault) to deliver. Life is too short to worry about the small stuff.