It's not a case of tricking the postal employees 
into letting you keep the cel. If you pay for the 
insurance and the item is damaged in transit, 
then the money AND the item are yours. End of 
line. Give them the packaging if they want it, 
but nothing else. All you need is for a postal 
employee to sign that they witnessed the damage 
to the item.

Let me put it to you this way. . . You insure 
your car. Said car gets plowed into by a drunk as 
you're sitting, legally parked, waiting for a 
friend to come out of a store. So you go to your 
insurance company and file a claim. So, do they 
give you the money and take the car? No-no-no! 
You get the money AND you keep your car. That is 
how insurance works.

Haven't we learned by now that most postal 
employees don't know a lot (sometimes, don't know 
jack crap!) about things that happen less 
frequently than every day? How many of us have 
been told that we absolutely *NEED* to send the 
six-week money order to Japan - that nothing else 
will work? That's only one example.

Now think about this. . . How many times do you 
*REALLY* think someone comes in to claim the 
insurance on something? Probably not often! And 
so the postal employees have no idea what to do 
with something like that right off the top of 
their heads - they could tell you how to buy 
insurnace, how much the insurance is, etc. . . 
But redeeming it?? Nope. So - usually in interests
of hurrying you along so the post office doesn't 
get backed up - they tell you that you have to 
give them *everything*, packaging AND item, 
simply because they have no idea what they DO 
need. (This is under the "better to have more 
than you need instead of less than you need" 
theory.) That way they can sort it out *later* 
rather than taking the time to deal with it 
*CORRECTLY* while you're standing there.

That is why some post offices ask for the item 
and some don't. The item does NOT need to be 
given to them - some post offices know this, and 
don't ask for it. Other post offices don't know 
this, ask for everything, find out later that 
they don't need the item and so they discard it. 
If the item were honestly *needed* by them, then 
NO post office would be able to file a claim 
without the item. **It's a government agency.** 
Each post office does NOT make it's own rules. 
Think about it for a moment.

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac