$10K Package Of Super Nintendo Games Finally Found By Post Office (eurogamer.net)

A project to preserve (and validate) every Super Nintendo game ROM had been derailed when the post office lost a package containing 100 games from the PAL region. But now Byuu, the creator of the Higan SNES emulator, reports that the package has been found. An anonymous reader writes: Thursday Byuu finally posted photos of the unboxing for the package that was shipped to him January 5th. "I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies to the USPS for assuming the worst in that these games were stolen. I should not have been so hasty to assume malicious intent." At the same time, Byuu writes that "My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box. Had this case not been escalated to the media, it likely would have gone up for auction in a bin with other electronics sometime in March."

Byuu is now refunding donations he'd received to replace the missing games, and says he can now also resume work on the SNES Preservation Project. And going forward, according to Eurogamer, "Byuu has said he will be more cautious with shipping games in the future -- only using smaller shipments, or buying individual games to scan and archive then selling them on to get some money back."

Comments

Re:Time for USPS to sue him for defamation

[Notabadguy]

He needs to go to jail for a long time.

Defamation for what? They *did* have his package. For a month. With no record of its location....leading to the not unreasonable assumption that it had been stolen - which is not as rare as we'd like to wish it would be.

If you were to take to google, you'd find that carriers routinely open, inspect, and reseal packages - often at the request of law enforcement, and without a warrant being required. This is especially prevalent in Colorado and Washington, where LE assumes everyone is trying to ship marijuana out of state.

Returning to the same google-fu, missing packages aren't a rarity - which is what insurance is for. He did have insurance on the package, but not nearly enough.

USPS Investigation?

[mirability]

They lost his package and didn't care. They would have sold it and profited from it if it hadn't gotten media attention. The rest of us just lose our packages. I hope this will trigger a larger investigation of how the USPS handles these things.

Re:USPS Investigation?

[Xenographic]

Well, the package got its address label ripped off, so there wasn't that much they could do. Yes, there was an old address label on the other boxes, but boxes get reused enough that they can't necessarily assume that's the sender or the recipient.

Re:USPS Investigation?

[Dutch Gun]

I recently had USPS packages lost. You first have to sign up on their website, which is irritating enough. After a lengthy claims-reporting procedure, it was LITERALLY impossible for me to file a claim on their website, as the mechanism was completely broken, preventing me from submitting. When I called the tech support number listed on their web site to report this, I got an advertisement/marketing survey asking me my age (and if you're not in the correct age range, they just hang up on you). Beautiful. Then I called a general help number, selected the "claims / lost package" section, and still wasn't able to talk to a human being (apparently, you could only look up an existing claim by ID). All other options resulted in the same thing. No way to talk to a person that I could discover. I had already wasted several hours by this time, and the package wasn't valuable enough to pursue things further, so I just wrote it off as a bad experience.

NEVER, EVER send anything you deem valuable or important via USPS unless you have no alternative, or are willing to write it off if it goes missing. Most of the time it gets their fine, but if not, you're probably screwed, and they apparently don't give a crap about fixing mistakes like these.

Lost packages happen - I'm not asking for perfection. But I've dealt with other carriers and have gotten rare mistakes quickly resolved.

High value items, use registered mail

[Anonymous Coward]

for the USPS, always use registered mail if sending something valuable. Registered mail is kept in secured, locked containers from receipt until delivery and the USPS is required to maintain full chain of custody records (every time the container with your piece in it is handed to a new person, they must sign that they received it). If lost, registered mail is traceable down to the person who lost it. If a registered mail piece is lost, the discipline in the USPS is quite strict because you know exactly who messed up.

And you should learn to read before replying.

[gweilo8888]

I guess you missed where he clearly stated that it was the post office (specifically, Deutsche Post) which was responsible for the manner in which the packages were taped together, not the sendor *or* the recipient.

FTFA: "When the donor went to send me the next batch of 100 games, he reused my boxes and took them to Deutsche Post for assistance in packaging them up. They ended up taping my two boxes together, and then wrapping the box in thick brown wrapping paper. This was not ideal, but please understand that this was done at the behest of Deutsche Post. The sender was not aware of the possibility that USPS' sorting machines could rip the label off. The postal workers, who ship mail for a living, really should have advised him better."