Mom Is Lost in the Mail

It's terrible. The Postal system needs to find those remains and get them back to the daughter of the deceased.

Just like the bodies themselves, there should be services that transport the remains. They should not be allowed to be sent by mail. It might cost more money, but you'd think we'd have a currier services where remains can be taken.

Well, I never heard of something like this happening until last week. It seems that the remains of the son of an Italian woman have been shipped from Switzerland (where the son lived) to her in the south of Italy. In this case we suspect that the "package" is retained in an Italian Customs Office because lack of correct official papers. Knowing that I waited 4 months to receive my birth certificate from Italy, this woman will wait for a very long time.

I read recently someone sent her son via UPS and it never arrived to the destination. UPS states they do not ship them so she declared it clothing. Yet, she is blasting them all over Yahoo and other places. UPS offered a check but how do you put a price on a cremated body? You don't but they were not at fault for the contents. Just losing a package.

This is really bizarre. I wonder if the company is doing the right thing and actually turning the ashes into rocks.

This is the first time I have heard of this. I know that the post office service has been declining but this is unacceptable. This country is full of entrepreneurs, maybe it's time for some to come up with a business to transport these remains to their families and bypass the postal service completely.

That should not even be happening. I did not know that lots of remains got lost by the post office.

I had read an article about that. Not sure if it's the same one. The article said she had labeled the package clothing. My aunt's remains were sent here from Florida many years ago, but I don't think she was sent by the postal service.

One thing that puzzles me is why are remains shipped in the mail? I’d think they’d be handed directly to the family member of the deceased. Oh wait! She sent them to the place to make the rocks. Did the remains never make it to the company? Or did the rock never make it to the woman?

Oh my goodness! USPS has terrible service; and they just had an increase. Where's mom? Have a good day.

That's indeed unacceptable. If that was me I would break down. I hope they do a better job. Kinda have to doubt if you can trust them.

That's just terrible. Our postal service needs rehauled from the ground up. I know the postal service here just...well, sucks. I signed up for informed delivery some time ago. I do have a locked mail box, so no one gets in it except me and the mail delivery person. You have to love it when the informed thingy tells you that they delivered such-and-such, but the person delivering the bill/letter/whatever manages to shuffle it into someone else's mail box. That has happened to me several times this month. Once the mail was in my neighbor's box and she brought it to me. Another time it disappeared and we are still waiting. Their service isn't a service anymore, what are we paying for?

As best as I was aware, cremated remains are a prohibited item for postal services. However it seems that USPS is the only one in the world allowing this, but with a special label. I might be mistaken, but I think the international cargo association has got a separate list of items not allowed transport by plane, in which case a container must be filled for surface mail. As USPS quit surface mail many years ago, it might be that they have to wait for many parcels to fill a container for surface shipment via rail. I've had international surface mail parcels stuck in warehouses waiting for containers for up to 18 months, so two years might not be so far off the clock. The general requirements for postal services are that prohibited items, once in the system, are not necessarily returned, but bonded. Once bonded it can be auctioned off or destroyed, depending on the actual item. Exactly the same process for damaged items - if the post office cannot repair the packaging, it goes to bonded warehouse for destruction. It might also be that the parcels arrived, but the company has not done the work they were appointed to do and is merely blaming the Post Office. In this regard USPS will have themselves to blame for not doing registered mail as required by the UPU. Personally, I think the whole concept is just weird, but to each his own.