Our Lost Package

It appears that one of the packages that we shipped in July just before leaving for Denmark is well and truly lost.

This is unfortunate since it contained winter coats for Leysia, Max, and me along with several other miscellaneous things such as books and toys for the kids.

If you look back at my previous posts about our packages, I thought that we had shipped six packages and what I called "package number 3" was missing.

In point of fact, I only shipped five packages, two in early July and three the day before we left in late July. The missing package was part of the three shipped just before we left. I remember going to the post office when receiving a notice that those boxes arrived but I must have experienced a brain fade because I left with only two of the packages. What I think happened is that the person behind the counter didn't know that three packages had arrived and only brought two to the front. If I had been smart enough to ask about the third package that day, I probably would have received it, since Post Denmark's computer systems show that the missing package definitely arrived with the other two.

Unfortunately, the package's status becomes unclear after that. It took me about a month to realize that I had only shipped five packages not six, and by that time, the package I failed to pick up had disappeared. The weird part about this situation is that Post Denmark has no record of what happened to the box next. It SHOULD have been sent back to the U.S. but they have no record of actually shipping the box back. They also cannot find it in any of the storerooms they use to house undelivered packages. I think they have concluded that an unscrupulous employee decided that the box was never going to be picked up and made off with its contents. They sent us a letter (written in Danish but helpfully translated by our friend Martin) essentially saying that they will reimburse us for the package since they can't find it.

The depressing thing about this situation is that the U.S. Customs form that was affixed to the package has a field on it that says "Sender's Instructions in Case of Nondelivery" and I filled that out by specifying that the box should be redirected to the Department of Computer Science here at Aarhus University. That never happened so that field appears to be essentially useless, perhaps just a means for making people feel better when they ship off their stuff to another country!

Well, we are not quite ready to give up the fight (although we have bought new winter coats for Leysia, Max, and me)... I'm going to have Callie (Leysia's sister) fill out a form at her local postal office to have the U.S. postal service look for the box using the number on the U.S. Customs form as the package id. Since I had the package insured, I'm also going to file a claim with the U.S. postal service for a lost package (though I suspect the claim won't go very far, since it was Post Denmark that lost the package.) My hope is not to get reimbursed but perhaps a search by U.S. postal service representatives in Denmark can turn up some piece of information that exists outside Post Denmark's computer systems.

Anyway, I think we'll be shipping a lot of things home via airmail and we'll spread the shipments out so we can bear the added expense of shipping stuff by plane.

Ken