Yeah it's fucking annoying. I needed to get my CIE (Italian national identity card) renewed and was still living in NYC at the time. According to the usual timeline, it should've made it with about a month to spare before I moved to Germany. US customs in NYC lost (or "lost") it...

...but you cannot actually file an international mail dispute until 45 days, and only the sender can initiate. So I had to file it with Poste Italiene. I also asked the NYC consulate and the relevant ministries (foreign affairs and interior) what I should do, and they both said to...

...just wait because if it ever made it out of US customs and was undeliverable (requires my signature), it would be returned to the NYC consulate who would then mail it to me. I followed up recently and they still told me to keep waiting.

The thing is, they're right, because the Italian embassy in Berlin is so backed up for CIE appointments, I might as well just wait and see with the lost mail situation. Still extremely annoying to carry a passport rather than an ID card though.