The eBay listing indicates this may be theft, not just plain loss. Have they told USPS about this? And I don't mean telling their no-doubt powerless social media team on Twitter, I mean reporting it to the postal inspectors:
https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/investigations/MailFraud/...
I (thankfully) have no experience with them, but I have heard that they are not people you want to mess with.
I once had an international package go missing at some point after clearing customs despite a label declaring its value accurately at $1. I doubt that was due to theft.
Not really. Every business has thieves. It sucks that this happened but it's not going to be a sizable blow to the USPS.
After shipping hundreds of packages my personal anecdote is that USPS is far better and cheaper than UPS and FedEx. This one other anecdote won't change that.
Time and effort cannot be replaced, but the monetary loss at least should be insured against.
Unfortunately byuu made a poor decision about risk. If anything this makes me question byuu's ability to assess risk which is a pretty important skill in someone looking to be an archivist. Throw in lack of accountability and this is someone I will definitely not be supporting.
Problem is, I was kind of coerced by the employee into using this specific shipping that gave me only $50 insurance on the package. I didn't realize I was so under-insured until after the package was confirmed as "lost".
I wonder if x-ray or something is making it easier for employees on the inside to target expensive electronics packages.
Since USPS is basically trying to blame byuu for this, I'm afraid the only option here to get any recourse is support-by-public-shaming. It would be a sizable blow to USPS's reputation to be framed as "A bunch of thieves who will deliver your stuff unless it's valuable, then we'll steal it, tell you we lost it, and sell it."
He could try to involve the police, but I imagine it will go nowhere. It's a pity.
EDIT: Corrected 'UPS' to 'USPS'.