doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com USPS lost my lefever!

I sent my wood and my receiver to be restocked months ago via USPS. It's been a while so I decided to call the stockmaker to get a progress check. Never got it! Money order has never been cashed. Went to the USPS facility that I shipped it from and they did a tracking report on it. Seems it was scanned in, but they have no other record of where it went from there, and they should have a record of every facility it went to on it's trip. "It just vanished", was what i was told. They gave me a bunch of forms to fill out but I got the feeling from them that they are not even going to try to find it, they are just going to pay the claim and insurance. Any idea as to how to get them to really look for this? It's a nice graded Dan lefever and now all I have is two sets of barrels. a forend iron and a trigger guard. Should BATF be involved at any point?

Bad!!!!!!!!!!! I sold a 20 sterlingworth and it took over two weeks to get to Washington state priority mail.I ship mostly registered mail now and they can track it better.I hope they find it. Bobby

DT & bb: Use Fed Ex and avoid that problem. I have shipped hundreds with 100% results.

Best Regards, George

I realize that here are better methods, but thanks for the info. What I really need to know is what are my options? Should BATF be involved at all. Can I do anything to make them look a little harder? I sell on evilbay all the time and use USPS all the time, have for years. This is the first time they have ever screwed up. I'm just surprised at their nonchalant attitude about finding it.

Never use the USPS! Use a continuous tracking carrier like UPS or Fedex. You can watch it move across the country with tracking updates. The Post Office can not give you tracking service until the item arrives, if it does. Besides, at that point, the receiver of the package can tell it you it arrived.

OK OK I GET IT. Don't use USPS. But I have, what do I do now?

Going to disagree here, as long as you use the USPS REGISTERED MAIL there's no safer way to ship as it must be signed for every step of the way and if it goes missing they know exactly on whose watch it went missing. Sounds like perhaps you didn't send it REGISTERED MAIL though if all they can tell you is they accepted it.

Sure, UPS and Fedex are better if you get your jollies from watching reports online about where your gun is, but try to get paid when it goes missing. The USPS will honor your claim. I had UPS break the stock on a $100 air rifle. It took about a dozen phone calls to the CEO's office and I had to threaten them with small claims court before they paid up. They figured it was cheaper to pay than send a lawyer.

I suppose you can report it to BATF but if it wasn't registered they might only be able to tell you what you already know.

Dubbletrubble, you might as well scratch that one up as lost. By some small miracle it may be sitting in some corner of a postal facility overlooked by all--and show up some day. Bet'cha it wasn't stolen in the PO. Very unusual to loose a parcel through the USPS. I normally ship plain old Priority Mail and have never had a problem. Oh, I always purchase the "signature requirement" so the postman has to personally hand it to the receiver rather than leave it on the doorstep.

Your gun is gone, especially after this long in the system. Possibly someone stole it, but that will never be proved. No way to make USPS DO anything.

BATF shouldn't be involved as it's not a BATF issue.

Sorry about your loss. I hope you had great insurance, although nothing will ever replace your loss.

Post the serial number of the gun. If it shows up somewhere maybe one of the watchdogs from the LACA will pick up on it. We are pretty diligent about collecting serial numbers.