When you use the Media Mail option with the United States Postal
Service, you give them the right to open and inspect the parcel to
verify that it does meet the requirements of that mail class.

As seasoned veterans retire from the postal service they are being
replaced with workers who have never even _seen_ a player piano roll.

In a recent experience, one of my parcels was returned and there was no
evidence that it had been opened -- only a sticker was affixed stating
that the package was not Media Mail.  A second package, mailed at the
same time, entered the "system" and after two weeks it had gone to
Dallas, Texas, then to Warrendale, Pennsylvania, then back to Dallas
where it sat for seven days with no activity, according to the tracking
number.

When the parcel arrived back in San Antonio, two and one-half weeks
later, I took the package to the post office and asked why it had been
returned.  The clerk whose initials appeared on the box, and who readily
admitted she had opened it, stated, "It was nothing more than a cardboard
tube with paper wrapped around it!"

I asked the postal station manager what steps I could take to keep
something like that from happening again.  He shrugged his shoulders
and told me there was nothing more that I could do than I had already
done: mark the package "Media Mail".

You have been warned!

Ed Gaida
San Antonio, Texas
- Preserving music by punching holes in paper and being a pain the
backside to the United States Postal Service!

 [ MMDigest articles about USPS Media Mail are indexed at
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Archives/KWIC/U/usps.html  -- Robbie