Shippers turned USPS's lost-and-found into a free dump, costing $163 million. Managers claimed 39% of packages got returned. Under 1% did.

Friends, Proverbs tells us a false balance is an abomination to the Lord and a just weight is His delight. The Postal Service's inspector general found the scales off in more ways than one. FreightWaves reports that USPS lost $163 million in revenue over 12 months because e-commerce shippers treated its Mail Recovery Center, the agency's lost-and-found, as a free disposal service. Packages sent there rose 45% in the 12 months ending in February, to an estimated 19 million, and 75% came from commercial shippers. Return-to-sender items that were refused or had invalid return addresses made up 62%. Return postage costs at least $12.63 a package, so refusing delivery pushed the disposal bill onto the Postal Service. Then the auditors checked the books. Management had claimed it returned 39% of missing packages to customers. The real figure was less than 1%, partly because of a spreadsheet formula, developed in 2016, that double-counted returns and went unnoticed until this audit. The center also received four times more "dead mail" than it reported over three years. The inspector general says USPS could raise almost $20 million over the next 13 months simply by collecting postage due and charging a refusal fee. Friends, honest measures matter at a corner store and at a federal agency. Collect what is owed, fix the formula, and stop letting private companies send their costs to the public's post office.