Snail mail and the festive season

[Dave A]

I just received an item of mail posted from Dublin, Ireland on 26th November 2008. That's just 5 days short of two months to arrive

By priority mail

[Frankincense]

One of my friends posted this on facebook 60 minutes ago "XXX is very angry and dissappointed at the South African customs officials who opened and stole gifts to my family from a closed FedEx parcel!!!!

She sent the FEDEX PRIORITY mail from London???

[Dave A]

I had a little run of pre-opened mail to my post box. After getting one particularly blatent envelope that clearly had been well sealed, I went into the post office and complained. The postmaster acknowledged that the envelope indeed appeared to have been opened (which was rather stating the obvious) but gave no indication that he was going to do anything about it - or even place the complaint on record.

However, I've never had a "pre-opened" envelope since. The run magically stopped.

Lesson learnt. Folks - it pays to complain and draw attention to these things. Don't let it slide - make the effort or it will never get better.

[Yvonne]

We were sent a gift from Japan, we suggested to the sender that he only send it via some traceable means, but he sent it ordinary parcel post.
Nothing arrived.
A couple of months later, we received a telephone call from someone who said he had our parcel and would like some assistance as he and his friends wished to try to import them.
My husband said we could hardly assist seeing that we had not seen the gift!
Ah! said the caller, my husband said he would need his name in order to give him the information! The caller declined. The parcel slip then arrived, and my husband collected the gift, but never received the follow up call for the advice to import.

What a darn cheek!

Don't they understand that basically they are making themselves obsolete, I do everything I can to avoid using the Post Office.
Yvonne