I requested 10 books over the last two weeks.  Three were damaged by the PO.  Another one was torn apart by a sorting machine.  The last one I received today had the packaging almost completely torn off and both ends of the envelope were torn open.  It is amazing that one made it in good condition.  Since the PO is going to go through major changes, please please PLEASE  pay attention to how you package your books.  The PO workers just don't care any more. 

Mary, that is an extremely high number of packages to be ruined. Please call your local post office and tell them that you are getting so much damaged mail and they may need to look into a faulty sorting machine on the route to you. Workers often don't handle the packages, machines do. If a machine is catching and damaging so many packages, they need to fix it.

That is terrible!

I'm with Melanie! I haven't had a package damaged by the Post Office in ages *knocks on wood* Something seems to be going wrong at your local PO. Let them know what's going on.

Excellent packaging advice Mary (thought we'd been hearing more of this lately). 

Melanie's advice is also excellent, do report the situation to your PO (or regional postmaster) that number really is much too high.

I've had many baddly wrapped packages, but all the books have been undamaged. The latest, I had 6 books in a bubble mailer with the end of the mailer sealed with lined notebook paper. The paper had no tape on it except around the edges, and it had more than halfway torn open by the time it got to me.

I encourage everyone to send a message to the sender stating what they could have done differently to make sure the package was undamaged (providing it wasn't a sorting machine that eats through tape). :)

Please contact your post master about this, that is a very high damage rate and there might be issues with some of the machines close to your home.

I agree--there's something fishy! I get a lot of books and I think the last one that was damaged by the PO was more than 2 years ago. Some are packaged better than others, of course, but actual damage to the book is pretty rare, at least for me.

Cheryl