I thought you would be interested to hear about an important letter that was posted in Agoz that took almost 3 weeks to arrive at its final destination in the UK via a journey to Frankfurt, then onto Helsinki followed by a visit to Langley distribution centre in Vancouver Canada, writes algarvedailynews.com reader Graham Wright.
Due to the Brexit situation, my wife has decided to apply for an Irish passport. To be able to do this the original parent birth certificate had to provided and sent to Lisbon. The passport was processed and the important documents duly returned the Algarve.
The remainder of the family in the UK decided to follow my wife's example and to do this the original parents birth certificate had to be returned to the UK. Sending these documents was delayed in December due to the Xmas period as it was feared that the package might get lost in the huge volume of letter post that is inevitable at this time of the year.
The package was duly addressed correctly with the postal code clearly stated. As double insurance, it was sent by registered delivery.
After 2 weeks the package had not arrived in the UK and a trip to the local post office established the fact that it had in fact arrived in Vancouver Canada but no explanation with regards to how, if or when the package would arrive its final destination.
Needless to say, my wife was very concerned at the thought that this valuable package would appear to gotten lost in the system. The assistant drew the attention of the situation to a colleague who in turn thought this was very funny. At this time my wife did not see the funny side and left the office in state anger and stress.
Several days later the package duly arrived at the correct destination having travelled halfway around the world and back again.
Not to let the matter rest my wife made yet another trip to the office to try and establish what went wrong and hopefully an apology for the stress this matter had caused.
She was asked to complete a form and asked to provide an envelope with her address here in the Algarve and the required information would be sent to her. For some unknown reason, the assistants English skills had completely left her which absolved her for from trying to provide an explanation.
A couple of weeks went by and she received the self-addressed envelope together with a demand for 1.95 to cover the postage cost. Inside the envelope, the only document contained was as attached with no further comment.
I would not be surprised to hear via your valuable newsletter the government had agreed to underwrite any losses the new owners of the service should it fail to make a profit. As sure as night follows day with this kind of service the new venture will continue to make huge losses.
Portugal is a great country to retire and live and you have to laugh at the various mysteries way of the various government departmental bureaucratic ways if not you would surely cry. Let us not even mention switching to a Portuguese driving license as that's on a whole different level.
Graham Wright, 2019
