I mailed a 2 Day Priority mail pkg. from NYC to Middletown CT on Sept. 16. According to the tracking report it was “dispatched to sorting facility at 17:08 pm” on the same day. It then disappeared completely from the USPS system. I have a “close out label #” which indicates that it was loaded onto a container truck… and then poof!, that’s it. Any suggestions about how to find it. All the Po says is that it’s very unusual for a Priority pkg to completely disappear…
Are they offering solutions or reparations?
Since it’s only been a week there’s a chance it will show up at some point.
Was it a large, medium or small package?
If it was a fairly small package you can imagine it falling behind something and nobody noticing it for a while. I would keep checking for the next week or two to see if it suddenly shows up on their system.
Container trucks must be cleaned out periodically and sometimes small packages reappear out of the blue.
I wouldn’t give up hope completely at this point - it’s not been that long yet. I’ve had several packages that were mailed and didn’t even show up in tracking for days. Our local mailman who is friendly with us explained that many times they’ll just miss scans and while a box keeps moving, it’s not scanned for progress. Then suddenly it shows up days later and hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Was it by any chance en route to a company with a large mailroom? My grandparents once mailed me a package to work, and it didn’t show up for a month…
Time to make some calls.
Call the last know location and see what you can find out. If they don’t know, ask where it was sent to next (sorting facility, another PO, etc) and get the phone number - most of these numbers are unlisted, but many people in the system will give them out to customers if you ask nicely. The 800 USPS number is pretty useless, you need to get to the local postmasters, etc. Keep going until someone can find it and help you.
I’ve had a number of packages get lost in the void, but almost all of them have turned up eventually. My business ships and gets rental returns via USPS for many items, so I’m familiar with the USPS’s degree of actual on time delivery for Priority packages (which isn’t very good).
I recently had a customer drop a return to me in Brooklyn, NY on 9/14 (Priority). Not a single scan on the tracking as of 9/24. I finally found a live person in the Brooklyn PO responsible, and next thing I know its delivered to me today 9/26. By the way, I’m about 50 miles from Brooklyn, so 12 days is a bit much!
somewhere I have a screengrab of the tracking for a Priority package I sent to a customer. It was sent from NY to PA. That package went to a NJ sorting facility, then to Florida, back to NJ, back to Florida, then the Puerto Rico (where it was processed through the same sort facility 3 times over 3 days) then disappeared for a week before suddenly being ‘out for delivery’ to the correct address and customer.
I had the printout on my bulletin board for fun for a while. Bizarre.
FWIW, as of July 26, 2013, Priority Mail with a barcode includes $50 of free insurance. Since you could track it, I assume it had a barcode. File an insurance claim.