My brother works for the PO, and in general, he agrees with most of you.
We are a very small town, and have a very small town PO,
where every PO worker knows everyones name and you can't get service any more personal than the postal workers asking about family, pets, concerns,
carrying boxes in and out for you, and even repacking stuff for free when it's packaged wrong.
But my brother also complains mostly about the way people ship stuff.
(besides the 'terminally angry' people who come in just looking for a punching bag...IE: Postal Worker)
Never, EVER ship any plant(s) unless it is in a
corrugated cardboard shipping box or padded shipping envelope.
Priority mail boxes are FREE! So there is no excuse not to use them.
(do not use thin cardboard boxes, someone sent me a waterlily in a cereal box once,
and it was a cardboard covered PANCAKE by the time it got to me....NOT the POs fault!
)
Inside the box, make sure there is at least 2 watertight bags around your aquatic plants.
What I now do is put a heavy duty black lawn leaf bag into the box as a liner, (or some other bag big enough to line the box)
and then put the aquatic plants in separate bags into the liner bag and the close it all up.
Aquatic plants do not need to be dripping wet for shipping.
When preparing your aquatic plants for shipping, set them out somewhere in the shade until excess water runs out from them, so they are not dripping wet.
Wrap them with a couple pages of newspaper, newspaper does not need to be wet.
No added water is needed...just seal the existing moisture into the watertight bag you are using.
Pad any open air areas with balled up newpaper, packing peanuts, or those new air bag things.
A tightly packed box keeps the plants from banging around inside the box and getting damaged.
Use tape made for shipping. Never use scotch tape. Tape
all seams, not just one strip of tape here, one strip of tape there.
I sometimes add a strip of tape along the seams on the bottom of the
inside of the box if it's gonna be a heavy one.
Tinks, I bet the lotus are still alive.
The boxes that I have recieved that were damaged the worse were from UPS.