Help Center - A CD I sent is lost in the mail!

If your CD does not arrive by the 21st day after you marked it mailed, it will be declared Lost in the Mail at SwapaCD.  This does not mean that the CD is actually lost; it may be delayed en route, or may have been misdelivered.  Also, the requestor may be away from home and unaware that the CD has arrived.  If so, he or she can mark it received from his or her Transaction Archive when he or she returns home.

If a CD you sent is declared Lost in the Mail at SwapaCD:

• As the sender, you should call 800-ASK-USPS or go to https://www.usps.com/help/missing-mail.htm and input the information online there . This will help USPS try to recover your CD if it truly has been lost in the mail.
  • This form at USPS is titled "Mail Theft"
  • This does  not mean only theft of mail.  USPS categorizes any mail that does not arrive or that is tampered with as "mail theft".
• You can get the information about the transaction from the Transaction Archive:
  • Click "Transaction Archive" in the menu under My Account in the toolbar at the top of the site
  • Click the Request Details link on the right of the "lost in mail" transaction
  • If you need more information (such as requestor address) you can ask the requestor in a Personal Message for that information.
    • We are unable to provide member address information outside of the duration of an active transaction, due to the SwapaCD Privacy Policy.
    • You can use the button on the transaction to contact the requestor.
• If USPS does return your CD to you, and it is undamaged and still playable:
  • You should ask the requestor (using the button on the Lost transaction in your Transaction Archive) if she or he still wants it. 
  • If she or he does, you can re-send it.  If she does not, you can repost it.

If you have a high proportion of outgoing loss (CDs you marked mailed that were never received) on your account, this bears looking into:

The most common causes of a high outgoing loss rate are: late mailing, inadequate wrapping, and non-sending.

• If you are mailing late, you can easily correct this. 
• If your wrapping is inadequate, the CDs could be getting lost en route, and you should read the Help items about wrapping CDs in What are the requirements for posting a CD?.
• If there is some other issue affecting your sending, this needs to be identified and addressed.

If a high loss rate persists on any account after we have discussed this with a member, this will jeopardize membership.  CDs need to get where they are going on SwapaCD, and the USPS rate of package loss is really low--a high outgoing (or incoming) loss rate can almost never be blamed solely on USPS.  If a sender wraps well, uses the correct address and amount of postage and mails promptly, more than 99% of her packages will arrive at their destinations.

Related Links:

USPS lost the CD I sent! (they sent me a notice/the empty wrapping)
How to Wrap a CD for Mailing
I received a CD that was 'lost in the mail'
How to Use the Transaction Archive