They did what?!

I have received a few questions on the whole lost dossier thing.

I immediately began preparing our dossier when we started with our Chinese agency in May. The documents included - new home study, birth certificates, marriage license, tax returns, medical documents, employment verification, passport copies, money and some other items. You get the picture. It is the type of packet you would get upon entering the witness protection program. It included information about our families, jobs, college degrees, social security numbers....you know...EVERYTHING! Even blood type. All of these documents must be certified at the state level and be sent to Washington DC for authentication at the US Embassy and Chinese Consulate. This is where things went very wrong.

Included in our package to DC were all of the originals and a full set of copies. The Chinese Consulate keeps the copies, stamps the originals and sends them back. We use overnight shipping to our courier service in DC to ensure that the documents are cared for and safe. I received a message from our courier service to call. I did and could hear in her voice that something was wrong. She said that she received my first package and wondered when the second package would arrive. Umm, what second package?? I said that there was only ONE package. She immediately explained that some of the copies were in the box but had been shoved in. I clearly did not shove my dossier documents into a box before shipping them. All the originals were gone. The checks and money orders were gone. Hmm. That's not good. As soon as she was done telling me that everything was missing I just said "I think I need to call you back". That was all I could get out. I honestly had no idea what to do. Who do you call? The FBI? Police? SWAT team?? The President?! HOLY COW. This was an emergency for sure.

I began to have a strong dislike-hate relationship with FedEx over the next two weeks. I was blamed for the documents not making it. They blamed my courier service. Then they said "we don't look for just paper". They said there was no evidence it happened while in their custody. They could find NO trace of our documents. I used the phases "I need to speak with someone else", "I can't talk to you anymore" and "What do you mean FedEx takes no responsibility for the loss of my confidential documents?" a few times. I talked to a lot of not-so-helpful people. I am pretty sure that some people missed the customer service training. I had to argue to even get back the money I paid to overnight our box. The box had been resealed with the good things missing. The box was not flagged (per the FedEx policy) when it was resealed/determine tampered with. I had to assume something suspicious happened and surely deserved to get my money back.

I was able to regenerate our entire dossier in about a month. That was about a $700 mess up. We also had to completely lock down our credit since FedEx could not come up with our documents. We had to assume someone stole the documents from the box since we couldn't prove anything else. At this time I don't think that anyone has tried to open any credit cards or buy a house using our names. In the spring we will check with social security to see if anyone is working under our numbers. We can add learning how to completely lock your credit, checking to see if someone is working under your social security number and the shipping policies of FedEx to the list of things adoption has taught us. Oh the things we have learned!! I should be keeping a list of all the lessons I have learned. It would be a colorful list.