worst postal service

Here I am in Canada, 3 months back from my vacation in Tahiti and still waiting for a postcard I'd sent to my parents. I've given up on the postcard but now it seems that the parcel package I'd sent is also doomed to be lost out there somewhere : ( I am so angry at myself for having lost the postal receipt as I don't think I have any options left now. There goes my souvenirs as this was a once in a lifetime trip. Anyone else have this happen? I don't want to blame the Tahitian postal system, but I have to wonder.....

The postcards I've sent during three trips to French Polynesia have always arrived in the States.

The only postcard of mine that failed to arrive home was from a French territory, too: New Caledonia.
Ones from places with much less reputable services like the Solomons or PNG all made it!

As for the parcel: Did you send it by airmail?
If not, don't give up hope too fast - parcels from PNG took 9 months to travel to Europe by sea...

I live in Canada, too.

Mail from Samoa often takes 2 MONTHS to get here.... Most postcards arrive home after I do. I had the same problems with postcards send from Thailand and Malaysia too so I wouldn't go and put all the blame on S. Pacific Postal services.... Post Canada is not known for it's efficiency at times either.... Takes a long time to move the post by dogsled, don't you know.

Hey, wait a minute... Isn't letterdude a Cancuk postie? Hmmm.... I wonder what he would say about all of this?

All I know for sure is that every FP citizen who asks me to get them something unavailable easily at home, asks me to carry it to them in my baggage. It leads me to suspect the mail system is in fact that bad.

Ed

13 boxes of our things sent home from Micronesia never arrived. Then the postal service asked me for detailed itemized lists, with receipts to prove the cost.

Right.

Ok...let's set aside the fact that we're dealing with postal systems that, over and above anything we North Americans would accept, are notably dodgy. As has been noted, there are extreme distances that must be covered and, in the case of "surface" mail, unreliable scheduled transportation. Then, there's mulitple national systems, through which the mail must be processed. Inevitably, you'd be looking at 3 or 4 different postal systems - with accompanying customs & excise, moving this stuff.

All it takes is one person to screw it up. If it's really important, I buy whatever "track & trace" service might be available. I hope that it's just late. It's certainly a possibility, still.

All the best,
Mark

#5 - They may be concerned with paying customs duties.
#6 - Doesn't Palau use the U.S. postal service?

Yes it does. But these were from Pohnpei. But Pohnpei uses US postal service too. I think that they are sitting in the back of the post office, mouldering. We've moved several times since then, so should they ever turn up, they won't turn up anyway. But I'm sure that they are now gone.

Silvanocat, the people I'm talking about wouldn't have had a problem with customs duties, they referreed directly to the mail being stolen in FP.

Ed

I live in Brazil. Most letters from the U.S., for example, eventually get here. Some packages never arrive, or get stuck in Customs for a long time. Post cards are harder to process than letters (at least in machine readers) and are more prone to get lost. What will you do if you somehow knew that the Tahitian postal system were to blame (not that you could prove it)? Sue them? Just assume the items you mailed will never arrive, and be pleasantly surprised if they do. If this is the worst thing that happened on your trip, you are lucky. How was Tahiti otherwise?

So it is now nearing middle of June. Four months later and still nothing! I have given up. Fortunately, every other parcel from the other 5 countries I traveled to made it home. Even the package from Bali made it fine and on time; and Bali is further away than Tahiti! Whatever may have happened to my package, I hope someone is getting good use out of it albeit there's not much to do with souvenirs.

I have a friend in Camaroon, which is widely ragarded as the most crooked nation on the planet, and he can only get mail from me if I send it to the US embassy or consulate. It happens.

Ed

Packages to and from the Cooks (near Tahiti) to US/Canada can take four or five months, so hang in there!

It arrived today!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!! Holy cow they took their SWEET time! More than 4 months later....feels like it came from the ends of the world. Thanks to all those who advised me to hang in there. Now that it's here in one piece, I take back every evil thought I've had about the postal service. I'm still astounded that the packages I'd sent from places further away, at later dates, arrived much faster. Word of advice to those of you shipping things to N. America....patience. But I've heard that kind of patience is for the dead. LOL

How wonderful to have your treasures turn up after ALMOST losing faith!

I hope they continue to remind you of the fabulous trip for years to come.

Rob

Thanks for coming here and posting the outcome.

Glad to hear it! Packages FROM the islands to more populated destinations will usually make it, sometime. However, that is not always the case when going from the US to tiny, relatively unknown, places.
I've still not recieved some Christmas cards sent to me in the Cooks, from the US. The were sent just prior to Christmas 1997!!

Yikes! That's crazy. Obviously from all the posts on this thread, we have a long way to go with most postal services. A couple of my postcards from Tahiti are still missing in action....no excuses since they were sent airmail. I wonder why they are so slow? Mail from certain parts of Pacifica like Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia makes it in record time. Why is there such a large disparity between them and some of the islands? Some of these islands even use the same postal system, i.e. US post. Should we just chalk it up to island time? LOL
Nevertheless, I am really happy that my "memories" of Tahiti arrived safely and I can look back on my vacation fondly without any blemishes. I hope all that missing mail/packages makes it home one day or at least benefits someone who deserves it in some way.

P.S. I have to commend New Zealand post for their efficiency. Due to a mix-up with a family member, I contacted NZ post regarding a package I mistakenly thought had gone missing. They did everything they could (i.e. letters, communication) to track the package and update me on the status of things. I was really impressed with their service!

Alright then...

:-P

Of course sometimes we hear about stacks of mail being recovered from the homes of postmen who have either become disgruntled with their employer, or for whom it has all just become too much.

Presumably some of these letters are still delivered years later.....

Sea mail is very slow from tiny islands such as the Cooks, since the PO waits until there is a full container before sending the mail to NZ. THEN it gets shipped from nZ to other places in the regular time frame, which can be a month to two moths for sea mail.

So, if you are on a small island, and are not sending tons of packages, it can be very slow.

That doesn't explain why air-mail psotcards take so long, however! It is one of those mysteries of life, they are probably routed to the same small town where all those missing odd socks end up that are not in the dryer when your laundry is finished!