World Adventure

Hi All, We packed up a box with some items, including a hard drive with a backup of our travel images, to send to Australia just before leaving London. We used Royal Mail as we expected it to be a reliable and responsible company but the box has not yet arrived in Australia and we paid quite a lot of money for the items to be sent. So we thought it would be as simple as giving them our tracking number to find out where the parcel was located. After a few very frustrating rounds with the customer service we have realised that they are not able to track the parcel and it is more than likely lost. We wish we had read this article before sending our package. This is just an example of what is posted on the internet: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4700190.stm. The more we looked the more we realised that there appear to be some serious problems with the operation of the company. Just look on the internet and there are many articles written by newspapers and it even appears that the problem of Royal mail losing mail has been raised in the British parliment. We won't be using Royal Mail again. We found it expensive and at this point unreliable. Our understanding with mail is that it is a contract between us and them to get a package delivered safely and in the agreed time. This has not happened. We have not found the customer service to be helpful in solving our problem and at this point do not expect any compensation. It appears that once the package leaves our hands there is no guarantee that it will arrive. Happy to take the money but not the responsibility. So for proven reliable mail try sending it from La Paz using Bolivia mail services or perhaps remote El Calafate using Argentinian mail services. We have found them quite reliable. So we have just bought another hard drive, hard drive caddy and copied our photo data again. Bye, David and Vanessa