I feel that the fact that they were able to recover this package with what seems to be relative ease is evidence of that.

I'm not sure what you mean by relative ease. This only got looked into after months, due to it raising a stink in the media. The package even made its way to the Atlanta office, presumably where its contents were intended to be sold at auction due to undeliverability.

Presumably he meant the relative ease of the USPS, not the sender/receiver's ease at getting the USPS to do the additional search. In other words, if the insurance payout had been higher, that would have triggered the more thorough search rather than media attention.

Why would you say that? What got this resolved was someone with influence at USPS seeing the news story and intervening. The insurance amount was completely irrelevant to this.

Also, it apparently wasn't all that easy. They searched, came up with nothing, and then had to request a second search in order to find it.

>Also, it apparently wasn't all that easy. They searched, came up with nothing, and then had to request a second search in order to find it.

But they seemed to have procedures in place for doing so, no?

Someone with influence saying "search again, and search harder" is hardly a procedure.

There is a system for congressional complaints that makes people act.

Do you have any idea how many calls a day a supervisor answering the phone receives? Not just "where's my parcel" but the patron has data that states intermediary carriers (ups to PO for last mile)

Thousands of calls a day. With 31,606 offices there has to be at least 2-3 calls per day.

Search harder is a congressional command. (Besides all their political mail is free to them)