Many (or most) of you know that in addition to writing a blog and counting my daily steps, my wife and I buy and sell books through an on-line business we have been operating for the past dozen years or so. It started as a way to downsize my large book collection, but since one of my most favorite thing to do is to search for books and then buy them, it hasn’t served that goal very well. Okay, it hasn’t served that goal at all. (It has served another goal -which is accumulating income for the purpose of helping the education of our grandchildren.)

We ship our books through the United States Postal Service (USPS). We have shipped between 2000 and 3000 books across the world, with remarkably few problems. In fact, we have never had a problem with a domestic shipment that I recall. We have had some overseas problems – the Royal Danish Post Office lost a book after it informed our customer it was waiting for him, twice the French postal service had been unable to find the addressee and returned books to us (in neither case did the recipient ever surface), and the German post office has failed to allow books through their customs giving us one bureaucratic excuse after another (we simply stopped selling in Germany).

But last month, the inevitable happened. We sold a book to someone in Liverpool, in the UK, for $450. That is an expensive book for us. The purchaser gave us an additional $30 to cover postage to the UK (our standard UK postage charge), but because the book was expensive and I didn’t want it languishing over the Sargasso Sea, I splurged and gave the Postal Service $86 to send in “priority express”, so that it would get to Liverpool in three or four days (rather than a week or two). We all know that no good deed goes unpunished, and this good deed was no exception.

The book arrived late, and it came with a note from the British postal authorities saying that they had received it from the Americans damaged and that it had to be repacked. The book arrived in Liverpool with the cover spine virtually pulled off, what almost looked like a knife had cut it evenly, although it could have been pulled off, I think.

The letter from the British postal service gives no details – it was just a form letter. In fact, as I think about it, I don’t know if it was in the package, or just accompanied the package. It doesn’t even identify the shipment; it’s really just a form. The buyer, who has been very accommodating, sent us pictures of the damaged book.

I tracked the book on the USPS website, and the website gives a very detailed description of the book’s journey until it gets on the plane heading over the ocean. But it does not say anything (I understand it never does) about damage along the way. So the damage could have been in the US, or on the flight, or even in Britain.

So, the story is, I guess, that we really don’t have a story. The book was insured up to $200 by USPS. I didn’t spend the few dollars it would have taken to insure it up to the purchase price because I have never had to make an insurance claim before. I am going to file a claim for this one (my local postal clerk told me “good luck”; that proving responsibility and valuation on international shipments was always complicated).

USPS has, on its website, precise instructions on how to make an insurance claim on an international delivery. Too precise, in fact. They have an on-line form you have to fill out, and a way to upload and send up to ten supporting documents.

So we have three levels of frustration. First, the fact of the damage itself. Second, the exercise of filing a claim. Third, what I anticipate will be a problem collecting.

As to filing the claim, USPS does not make it easy (for me). Filling in the form is easy enough, but uploading my exhibits (the order, the shipping receipt, the British letter regarding repacking, and the two pictures) is a little complicated.

You see, most people assume, because I have a blog, because I put all sorts of things on Facebook, because I send emails through multiple addresses, because I look things up a lot, and because I can even put together a rudimentary (emphasize that word) Power Point presentation, that I certainly can manipulate documents and pictures on my computer. In fact, I have no clue. Back when I was working, and used earlier editions of Windows, I in fact was able to do more than I can now. Now, I have little need of sophistication. I can type a document in Word, but when I save it, I save it by name only. I used to save things in folders, like I do with my email, but now, everything in one place and I rely on my knowledge of the alphabet, my sense of when something was created, and my ability to name a document so that I can later identify it. That’s OK; I can deal with that.

But I am at a loss regarding photos. I have no idea what to do with them. In fact, I use my smartphone for photos. I have thousands of photos on my phone, I have most of them organized, I can find them, and I can send them or post them as required from my phone. But my phone is not synced with my laptop (at least if it is, I don’t know where to see that it is). When I want to save a photo on my computer, I email it from my phone and then save it on my computer.

And to make things more complicated, I don’t know how to store photos, and therefore I don’t know how to find them. The obvious ways don’t really work and they seem to be here and there, and I don’t know where all the heres and theres are.

The USPS form requires that all attachments be downloaded as PDFs. That means not only do I have to find things, I have to make sure they are in PDF form, and I have to have them in one place, so that when I will out the form and get to the attachments, I can pull them all up one after another.

Because you see there seems to be another problem. It does not appear (to me) that you can fill out the USPS form and then save it until you get your exhibits together. You fill it out, add the attachments and transmit it as one action. Otherwise, you have to start all over again.

You see my frustration?

Meanwhile, my buyer wants to keep the book. He has asked for insurance proceeds (if any) and has not asked anything from me directly (yet). He is going to see about rebinding the book and I told him I would help him with the cost of that. I think rebinding is probably a good idea.

Oh, the $450 book. You are interested in what it is? It’s a 1944 copy of The Secret State by Jan Karski, which Karski inscribed twice, once in English and once in Polish. It was in good condition for an 80 year old book, but certainly not pristine condition. It was one of my favorites. I hated to see it go. And now this…..