"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.


Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." -- Ephesians 3:14-21 (ESV)





Tuesday, July 12, 2011

By Wire

This is a long story, but I'm going to try to keep it concise. Our office ships a lot of expensive equipment around the country. A couple of months ago, a pallet was shipped and when the pallet arrived at the destination the plastic wrap around the boxes was ripped and one box was missing. The value of the stuff in the box is in the 5-figure range, so we filed a claim with the shipper for the loss and they initiated an investigation.

Turns out they couldn't recover the lost box and because the federal government is self-insured, the shipper is not going to reimburse us for the lost goods. We did receive a small reimbursement for the pro-rated shipping amount (less than $10).

I emailed our HQ to inquire about what we need to do to recoup the loss and I was told that there is a fund for this kind of thing. In researching how to go about filing a claim, I was reading some of the federal regulations about shipping losses. I'm wondering when this code was last updated because nothing resembling our equipment was in the lists of items deemed "valuable" by the government. Also the instruction said to send the claim report by wire.

By wire?

My first thought was that I could hitch up my pony and hand deliver the report. Let's bring back Pony Express.

Nowhere in the instructions was there an email address, phone number, or fax number. A PO box address was listed, but were telegrams ever delivered to PO boxes?

I'm half tempted to send this to my Congress-critter as an example of inefficient and wasteful government.

I later found a phone number on this agency's poor website. I plan to call today to get more information about filing our claim.

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