Yup, you heard it. I never thought I'd have to worry about this, but it is very real in my life right now.
It started a few weeks ago when I realized a gift I had belatedly bought Shane for Christmas had not arrived. I checked the tracking information and it said it had arrived on Christmas Eve! Seriously?! It most definitely was NOT here. I talked to the mail carrier about it, and she alluded to the fact that our particular cul-de-sac had had some mail theft problems in the past. Oh no. The $25 razor blades were gone. In fact, I contacted the eBay seller to ask if they could do anything for me, since I hadn't received my item, and they didn't care and ignored me. I opened a case with eBay and eBay has ruled "in favor of the seller." That sucks.
Interestingly, we got have a PO Box because this rental is temporary and we thought maybe sending magazines and stuff there would be a better idea. Well now we are trying to move everything over there. Unfortunately at Christmas time, Shane told me to send more stuff to the house since he had to wait in line at the Post Office to pick up any packages that didn't fit in the box.
So yeah, razor blades gone. I couldn't decide if I wanted to file a police report or complain to the USPS, so I just let it go... until today...
When you have a new baby, you expect two big things in the mail: a birth certificate and a Social Security card. I naively arranged to send them both to the mail box. By the graces of heaven, the Social Security card showed up a few weeks ago. But I never saw the birth certificates. I noticed that King County Vital Statistics had cashed my check for the certificates on 12/28, so I called this morning asking where they were.
They were issued 12/22. They should have arrived soon thereafter. Most likely on Christmas Eve, the same day Shane's gift was also stolen.
I immediately went into freak-out mode. The department could issue me replacement certificates at no cost (very cool), and I had them sent to the PO box. But now what? What can someone do with my baby girl's birth certificate?
Could they get her Social Security number somehow and open accounts, establish credit, steal her identity? I spent all day trying to figure out how they could and how to stop it. Some things I learned:
- Birth certificates are public record. If someone knows my name, my husband's name, and the county Laurel was born in, they could go to any Records Office in the state of Washington and pay $20 and get her birth certificate. Anyone.
- Each birth certificate is "certified" and as such is printed on a piece of paper which contains a specific serial number. Unfortunately it is not possible to "invalidate" a serial number or two if they were stolen. Which seems lame, but whatever.
- The Federal Trade Commission has a hotline on identity theft and some nice people there do their best to calm you down, give you ideas, and wish you luck. Other than that, the FTC can't really help.
- The Social Security Administration telephone people are less helpful. I was told by someone (I thought at the FTC) that I could put a "flag" on Laurel's number and if anyone tried to get a copy of her card they would have to prove they were me or Shane, but that wasn't true. This lady told me to call the FTC; I got a little irked and said, "the FTC told me to call you." She didn't like me talking back to her.
- What you can do is contact all three credit bureaus and put a "fraud alert" on a Social Security number. That way if anyone tries to establish credit, etc., they have to like, provide additional identification or something. The credit bureaus do this a lot for minors (and it remains in effect until they turn 18), but the request must be submitted in writing. No credit reports exist for minors, so it's difficult to find out say, right now, if anyone has stolen Laurel's identity. It's not collected. This freaks me out. Plus, if I want any info on her number, I need to submit it in writing by mail anyway.
- My freak-out reached a fever pitch and I up and went to my local Social Security office and waited in line to talk to someone knowledgeable. Thank goodness I did. Basically, the man told me that you can't just waltz into a Social Security office with a birth certificate and demand a Social Security card and number, even a duplicate. You have to provide identification that you are the mother or father (on the birth certificate), or prove custody with documents from courts, pediatricians, etc. Essentially, someone would have to steal my identity in order to steal hers. Since I know I'm pretty safe, it's unlikely whoever has her birth certificates could do this. Although it still makes me a little sick.
- My final act was to file a police report. I called a few offices, one of which told me to dial 911 (I really didn't want to since it wasn't an emergency), but I finally found an online report to do this. I reported mail theft of the razor blades and the birth certificates. In fact, one helpful lady said that you can submit to the precinct, in writing (no form exists, just write a letter), a letter stating an address and asking for copies of police reports filed and 911 calls made within a certain area of the address for a certain time period. Fascinating! If the resulting report is under 50 pages it's free, and if it's over 50 pages you have to pay a few cents per page. You better believe I'm gonna do this when we finally find a house to buy. Since the USPS lady told me there had been mail theft complaints here before, I wonder what I'll learn?
- Additionally, I'm planning to knock on every door in the cul-de-sac, introduce myself, and say that I have had mail stolen, ask if they have had mail stolen, and state that I filed a police report and encourage them to, as well. I can't be the only one who was a victim. Plus, if the perpetrator lives here and uses our mailbox as his own personal shopping center, then maybe that will scare him off. I doubt I'll ever get my things back. But I certainly don't have to sit here and cry. Although that also did happen today.
I'm buying a locking mailbox for our new house. I can't deal with this again.
1 comment:
30 years ago, after we first moved to Salisbury, we obtained a PO box. I remember having mail theft problems from our rural mailbox when I was a teenager.
Since we run our own business, all of the important stuff goes to the PO box.
Ironically, we have had problems with mis-directed mail here more than theft. Someone else on another street has the same house number, and we would get some of their mail from time to time. I have to assume that they received some of our mail as well.
And it was a missing ebay shipment that alerted me to the potential problem: Bought something on ebay, waited and waited for it, then checked tracking only to find out it was "delivered" a week earlier.
Maybe it was delivered, but it did not arrive here. We did complain about it to the post office, since this was a case of laziness on the part of the carrier(s). Lazy in the fact that they only looked at the street number, and not the entire name when they pigeon-holed the mail in the wrong slot, and delivered it to the wrong place.
The misdirected mail has slacked off big time since our complaint, but occasionally we still get a piece or 2 of the other person's stuff .... (it also does happen at the PO Box, but with much less frequency, BTW)
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