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More post/parcel/mail craziness (long story)

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  1. #1

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    More post/parcel/mail craziness (long story)

    TLDR version: Argued with supercilious HK Post employee over necessity and advisability of his recording a postal patron's entire HK ID number in the course of delivering a parcel. Several packages that passed through his workplace shortly afterwards didn't turn up. More than a month after they were shipped, we begin making inquiries. We tell postal inspector that we're thinking about going to the police. Suddenly, the packages start showing up.

    Longer version: My wife and I had a problem with packages arriving obviously opened that I posted about back in June. My wife and I ended up getting in a taxi and literally visiting our local HK Post "delivery office" (different from the regular post office) with the packages w/holes in them in hand and speaking to the postal inspector there. He was a genuinely nice guy and struck us as being honest. He assured us that the facility was so well-covered with CCTV cameras that nobody would be able to poke or tear holes in our packages w/out being seen on camera and that none of the postal employees there would risk being fired and arrested and contended that any tampering could only have been done by the shipper before the pkgs were handed off to HK Post. We pointed out that every CCTV system has its black spots, that those locations are likely well-known by employees, questioned why HK Post wouldn't note that the pkgs they'd been given had been tampered with, etc. and said that if we kept receiving packages that had been opened, we would go to the police.

    Miraculously, the parcels and mail that passed through HK Post began arriving mostly free of signs of tampering.

    We considered getting a PO Box in Central but my wife didn't want to let the bad guys "win", so we kept getting Amazon and The Book Depository and other deliveries at our house. When possible, we opted for UPS/DHL/Fedex, but some stuff (like orders from TBD) always went thru HK Post. Small parcels were delivered by our regular mailman but larger boxes were brought directly from the delivery office by postal employees working there.

    Fast forward to September. An HK Post employee (not our regular mailman) is delivering some boxes of books and DVDs while I'm at home and asks to see my HK ID. No problem. I show it to him. He begins to write the number down and I know that postal workers in HK are generally instructed to record only the first 5 numbers/letters. Given that I don't want my name, address, and HK ID number in the hands of people who seem to have been tampering with my mail, I then cover the remainder of my HK ID number with a fingertip.

    He insists on writing down the whole number and his body language, manner, etc. become quite rude at that point. We have a standoff. I suggest that he leave the packages with the guard in my building but he decides that he doesn't want to do that (even though HK Post often does precisely that). Then I tell him that he can take them back to the post office, leave a slip in our mailbox, and we'll pick them up later. He leaves angrily.

    I phone my wife, who is on her way home, and tell her what's just happened. She arrives home and encounters him in the lobby. A heated discussion (with much smirking and arms-crossed haughtiness on his part) ensues, which I catch a bit of on the CCTV before I head down to the lobby. When I get to the lobby, my wife has gotten on the phone and reached the guy's supervisor, who confirms that he should have given me the packages and that they do not need the whole ID card number and never insist on it.

    Visibly upset, he hands the packages over, I sign for them, and he leaves.

    Our normal postman (also a decent guy with whom we've never had any problems) was stuffing envelopes into mailboxes in the lobby at the time. He and our building's security guard witness this phase of the incident, along with some other residents waiting for elevators and gawping/rubbernecking (I live in the NT in a fairly local building).

    Before and shortly afterwards, my wife and I ordered some books from TBD. They had to have passed through the same HK Post delivery office. The time when they should have arrived comes and goes. More weeks follow. Other parcels, ordered later, arrive roughly on schedule.

    A month after the first missing order was shipped, we begin making inquiries. At least for HK, TBD uses a shipper that hands their parcels over to HK Post for delivery after stamping the parcels with a "If this can't be delivered, return it to us at <ADDRESS>." message on it. The company and address are always the same and we look at a photo taken of an old damaged parcel (from the summer) to find the company's info and call them up. Nope, nothing intended for us has been returned to them as undeliverable. We also call up the postal inspector. We also let TBD know what's going on b/c their TOS feature a 10-day window for requesting replacements/refunds that begins on the 30th day after shipping and expires on the 40th.

    As before, when we speak with the postal inspector (on Wednesday this week), he is nice and genuinely wants to help us. He checks his facility and an attached facility for packages with smudged/illegible addresses that couldn't be delivered and calls us back the next day to say that he and his subordinates couldn't find anything addressed to us. We thank him and tell him frankly that we suspect that someone (not him) has diverted/hidden/stolen those packages and that we're thinking of calling the police.

    Last night (Thurs. night), my wife and I got home at roughtly 6:15 PM and, at 6:30 PM, a man shows up at our door and rings the bell. When we open the door, he hurriedly introduces himself, claims that he is a courier and hands over what turns out to be the 2nd missing order. He isn't wearing any sort of uniform. Isn't carrying any sort of company bag/cart. He doesn't ask us to sign anything. He scurries away and is gone. We speak with the guard downstairs, who looks at the sign-in sheet and tells us the name he signed in under and the company that he claimed that he worked for. The guards in our building don't check IDs, it seems.

    Today, Friday, we found the contact number for that courier company. They don't deliver locally and no one with that name (the one that the guy wrote on our building's sign-in sheet) works there. They definitely don't make deliveries as late as 6:30 PM in the evening. The parcels should have been handled by HK Post and TBD's shipper, anyway, and not this third party.

    Also today, our friend the postal inspector called us up again. Someone discovered a big bag containing a lot of parcels addressed to us somewhere in his facility. Evidently, the address on the outside of the bag was unreadable and so, after arriving in HK, the bag was shipped back to Belgium. Then, it was shipped back to HK again. This bag didn't turn up during the search that occurred on Wednesday. Somehow, it went back and forth multiple times without TBD's shipper (which would have had stickers/stamps on all of the parcels in the bag and likely one on the outside, with our address) being involved -- even though undeliverable parcels are supposed to go back to them.

    My wife and I will be in and out over the weekend, but we've arranged for delivery on Monday afternoon. I have no idea what condition the books will actually be in when we get them, whether or not all of the missing books will indeed by included, etc. If there's damage, then we will get a refund.

    My wife and I are fairly sure that the dog fart postal employee who wanted my HK ID number so badly (foiled power tripping coupled with xenophobia towards non-Chinese? attempted identity theft? who knows..) was still angry at the loss of face that he suffered at that time that he intercepted the parcels comprising the two missing orders when they came through and with/without his buddies' help, stashed them somewhere. If he had kept hiding our deliveries, it would have been too suspicious, so he satisfied himself with diverting those two orders worth of packages and let subsequent parcels through. After we started calling around, his supervisor might have communicated the fact that we were considering going to the police. He reflected a bit, decided that he didn't want to risk prosecution, and got a friend or someone who owed him money or sth to bring around one of the orders, while simultaneously placing rhe bag containing the other order's packages in the postal facility for his supervisor to find.

    It's a scenario right out of a Seinfeld x Jason Bourne mashup, but sadly plausible in the context of HK. When someone has a problem with you, they're usually too cowardly to confront you directly. Instead, they poison your dogs, drip corrosive liquids on you from a rooftop, splash you with acid and run away and, it seems, tamper with or divert your mail.

    My wife and I may still go to the police. We haven't decided yet. The only real, solid lead would be the CCTV footage of the "courier" who visited last night.
    Last edited by dear giant; 14-10-2011 at 07:38 PM. Reason: typos/mismatched tenses in long version

  2. #2

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    i would definitely go to the police. if this is happening to you, it could also be happening to others. isnt' tampering with the post a criminal offence?

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  3. #3

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    Well, I need more information.

    dear giant, er2, Morrison and 3 others like this.

  4. #4

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    I can imagine the police thinking something like, "You got your books late, some of them a bit banged up.. So what lah?" I have a feeling that getting any real action on their part will require us asking our lawyer to help us to prod them (if our lawyer would even be interested in this problem).

    Even then, and discounting the cost, it'll be more time down the drain.

    And then ... if the guy does lose his job or is arrested, then we'll have to worry about having the guy or a friend of his splash acid on us or cleaver-attack us outside our building.


  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by bryant.english:
    Well, I need more information.
    My excuse for the extra-long post is that I was writing up the story for an email to relatives back in the USA* and as a very rough draft for a chapter in my as-yet-uncompleted book about living in HK.

    * where mail and packages arriving completely intact and without much delay is the norm and where postmen don't ask to see your driver's license/passport/ukelele club membership before handing you your stuff.

  6. #6

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    Wow. Interesting story. Come to think of it, I once ordered 3 books from amazon and never got them. I got a full refund from amazon, but now I think about it, they were most probably stolen in HK. What's the point of stealing books though?! In most cases they'll have no chance of selling them on.

    That was quite a long time ago, though. I also live in NT.

    It's a shame when you can't trust the postman.

    To this day I still don't fully understand the concept of 'losing face' and doubt I ever will!

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  7. #7

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    DEAR Giant: thanks for sharing ! I just read the short version though.
    As a consequence of this matter you should go and get get a chop with your HK ID on it !!
    Just HK$ 60.

    Have you heard about the employee they caught stealing letters at the Airport's post office 1 or 2 years ago !? It seems they don't pay well enough.

    Gosh, as a kid I used to drive with the parcel delivery and asked for the stamps upon delivery., good old times.

    dear giant likes this.

  8. #8

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    justjoe, I think they hope that you've ordered something like one of the few bits of electronics that Amazon will ship here, or maybe some DVDs, so they crack the package open and have a look. In my case, they would then send it on to me anyway. Maybe in your case they didn't want anyone to call and complain and just dumped the packages and their contents.

    I've cut up and disposed of all of our recent Amazon boxes but I think that Amazon includes the value of the shipment and the contents on the sticker somewhere (I may be wrong), but the people working in the sorting areas of HK post offices probably don't have great English and just try their luck. I know that our postmen, even the nice ones, can't speak more than a few words of English.


  9. #9

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    Oh newman!!!!

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  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by Morrison:
    As a consequence of this matter you should go and get get a chop with your HK ID on it !! Just HK$ 60.
    I'm wary of giving random people (like the postal employees whom I suspect are crooked) my HK ID number because that seems to be used by a lot of entities (govt. agencies, hospitals, etc.) as the prime way of identifying me.

    With my name, address, and ID #, a bad guy might be able to socially engineer access to my medical records (just by calling around to private hospitals), for example, or file/apply for god-knows-what in my name.

    In other words, I don't want anyone whom I don't trust to have my ID number and even then I hate giving it out.
    Last edited by dear giant; 14-10-2011 at 08:17 PM.
    bookblogger likes this.

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