$333.39 American

So we sent 333 dollars American to my parents in Las Vegas via a registered mail, international postal money order just under a month ago.  The Money order arrived at the American post office safely and the mail man even tried to deliver it once to my parents’ home but they were out.  The mailman left a note for them and apparently took the letter back to the post office.  However, when my mom called the post office to see about picking up the letter, no one at the post office seemed to know where the letter was.  The carrier had logged it as delivered, but my parents hadn’t signed for it, so it shouldn’t have been delivered, and their mailbox is locked, so it wasn’t taken out of the mailbox.  The carrier doesn’t seem to recall what happened to the letter, only saying that ‘it was busy that day and he doesn’t remember.’  However, according to the post office people themselves, losing registered mail DOESN’T happen.  The safeguards for keeping registered mail on track are supposed to be fool proof.  Which is why I feel like a fool now, because our money is gone, and the process of getting it back, assuming no one finds and manages to cash the money order, will take several months.  Worse than that though is that now I don’t feel like I can trust the post office with handling our money orders and that was the cheapest way to send money to the states that is currently available to us. Ugh.  

I talked with my mom about it today and for the first time felt a bit frustrated about the whole situation.  Not only because it means being overdrawn in our bank account, and possibly losing three hundred dollars, but because it means mom is stuck hassling the post office in my place because I am here in Japan, and because I can’t help but feel like the postman is not telling the whole story.  If registered mail is really guarded and protected like the post office says it is, (they have a literal ‘cage’ for it apparently),  then loosing it ought to be a big deal and this guys head should role, or something.  I would at least feel better if his supervisor questioned him a bit more thoroughly.  I want to be a trusting person, and I also want justice.  And who better to have going to bat for me than Mom Franklin.