Fast and Furious, Postal Service style

Dude, where's my rifle?

Last month, I bought another rifle at auction. I promptly paid the seller, a guy in Idaho who runs a small resale business, and I waited for it to arrive.

A week or so went by and I checked the tracking number. I saw that my new rifle was accepted by the Post Office in Eagle, ID on January 21st. Yay! Expected delivery date, January 27th.

Well the 27th rolled around and...no rifle. It didn't show up on the 28th, either. In fact, it didn't show up anywhere until the tracking information was updated on February 1st. The rifle has just passed through a sorting facility, still in Idaho. Then it dropped out of sight again.

WTF, over?

Calls to the Post Office customer service line were less than helpful. I was told by a couple of different bored-sounding "civil servants" that they had as long as a month to get me my package, and this did not change when I enlightened them to the fact that the package that they were rather lackadaisically shuffling around was a firearm--one of those things that the government was always railing about us citizens not keeping proper track of. I was told again that if it didn't materialize in another week, I could file a claim for the value of whatever the shipper had insured it for.

So the possibility of this evil gun stalking around by itself or going home with some thug or gang member that took a job with the Postal Service just to steal such things doesn't matter? Apparently not, according to the unfireable and anonymous phone monkeys that I was talking to.

Well yesterday, when the rifle still hadn't popped up, I called them again to demand that they either find it or write me a check and give me a letter admitting that they'd lost this thing and absolving me of responsibility for it's future use by parties unknown. Another bored-sounding postal apparatchik took my name and number and told me that they'd look into it and get back to me in two business days. And today they called to let me know that the rifle had just resurfaced...back at the originating Post Office in Eagle, Idaho again. It was right back where it had been shipped from nearly a month ago. At least now we know were it is, but it's no closer to being here than it was weeks ago, and where has it been? Do I really want a firearm that's been out of place and handled by who-knows-who? For all I know, the BATFE watched this rifle go to Mexico so that some drug cartel gunmen could use it to whack a couple of Federales or innocent civilians. For all I know, it's fired shots back across the border at our own law enforcement officers and then been returned like an overdue library book.

Realistically, it's probably been sitting under some table or in the front of some mail truck trailer all this time, but I'll never really know, will I? And the irony of the situation here where another entity overseen by the US Government is totally responsible for this weapon's disappearance is too great to ignore.

I told them that now that they know where it is, it'd be in everybody's best interest for them to have someone grab it and put it on a plane directly to here before it can go walkabout again.

Their response? Nope. It's going to be put right back into Ground delivery and may take up to two more weeks to arrive. And there's nothing that I can do to speed it up, because they don't feel a need to do anything to make up for their own negligence.

At this point, since I don't know where it's been or what damage is accruing due to their mishandling and neglect, I'm seriously considering telling them to just cash me out for the full insurance value and letting them keep it.

Sigh...