usps ripped off ?

i shipped an order by post office over night, it was 50 hatchling turtles, they are illeagle to ship i did not know this, from fl they went to LA ca. they were damaged in shipment, they repacked them, called my reciver in Hi.said they had done this fed and watered them but had to ship them back to me , after a week they did not get back, today my local po said that when they got to la., they were dead and stinking and had to be destroyed , no one has told me anything or mailed me any thing, now the PO says that the ins is no good on perisables so nothing but my shipping back, any suggestins on what to do,i think someone from the po took them home
100 turtles will not break me, but stealing turtles wll get me po
help gene

Considering that ignorance of the laws pertaining to USPS shipping is no excuse for violation of them, I'm not certain what you CAN do to recoup your losses on this. It's probably the case that someone helped themselves to your turtles, but you'd have a tough time proving it. All in all, I'd say you better chalk this up to a "lesson learned."

Sorry . . .

Hello, Hi? I assuming you mean Hawaii? If that’s the case be glad someone stole them and the PO or whoever enforces it isnt trying to arrest you. Shipping animals of any kind into Hawaii like that is highly illegal, HI takes it seriously, I lived there for a couple years. When I was there a guy snuck in a bunch of albino burms and got busted there after. Till they were done with him his fines, lawyer fees etc were in the 6 digits. If I can find the news paper article Ill scan it for ya I am not sure if I got it anymore of not though. Most likely what happened is once your package got to LA they either scanned it or dogs sniffed it out. They randomly check packages going to and check most all packages going from. We deployed from Hi to Fort Polt the one time and they had dogs checking everything of ours. They were extremely thorough with their search. We figured they were drug dogs because the pot grown in HI has a higher street value because something about the volcanic ash in the soil makes it more potent. Well we could have had 100’s of pounds and they would have never known. These dogs weren’t trained for drugs at all. They have various plants and birds native only to HI that they are determined to keep there and that’s all the dogs were trained for. When they did this it was all military, no civilians at all were involved in the deployment. The Army rented 2, Boeing 747’s to get our gear and us to Fort Polt. After this deployment I went on leave and came home but the guys who didn’t went through the same process once the returned. Hawaii really has cracked down on that. Mongooses, Jacksons chameleons are non native and there having a lot of problems with them in the wild. Also they have a lot of problems with Brown tree snakes from Guam. These snakes are not native to Guam and in Guam have wreaked havoc on the native populations of birds, pushing some species to extinction. When I was there I heard about them finding 20 or so of these snakes on the runways that had snuck aboard planes. You could go to the airport and watch them patrol along the runways with dogs trained to sniff these and other stowaway pests out. Hawaii takes it seriously, if you move there with a dog, your dog must be quarantined for its either 60 or 90 days at they cost of $3g’s or so. If I read your post right and you were shipping to HI Id be grateful your package was damaged, stolen whatever. I don’t know if they could do anything to you or not but if they could the money you made on the turtles is little compared to what it would cost. I honestly wouldn’t rock the boat by trying to get your shipping money back, if the wrong person finds out what was in that package it could cost you. I could be wrong though I don’t know the laws about sneaking stuff in. That’s just my opinion based on what I seen and heard while I was there. Anyway best of luck, Jason

I gotta say thast you have one hell of a lot of audacity to accuse anyone at the Post Office of theft if that is all the information that you have.

In fact, you seemingly had a hell of a lot of nerve to ship them the way you did. I am only guessing that you did not have the shipment labelled as LIVE TURTLES and then with the species name as required by the Lacey Act. I am also guessing that you were shipping them to Hawaii. If I am correect about the destination then that was a bad move on your part - and it is quite possible that the turtles are not dead at all but are being held as evidence for criminal prosecution, and furthermore any inquiries you make are being recorded by the authorities. I kind of hope for your sake that they did die and were dumped as the Post Office representative said they were.

Shipping against a private comapny's rules, like Airborne Express is one thing, shipping in violation of federal law is quite another. Ignorance of the law does matter to federal prosecutors. I would suggest that before you ship in the future, or even before you have someone ship to you, you check the Postal regulations available on the USPS website.