Thailand Post System-Lessons Learned

[Dan747]

 Years ago, while I was working/traveling in Aviation away from my Spouse here in Thailand, I would occasionally send her a letter from another country to keep in touch. To my surprise, I found only about half of the letters I wrote would be received in Ubon Ratchathani at our house. Just last month, as I returned to the USA do complete our tax returns and left my wife in Thailand do to some business transactions she had to complete. I decided to send 10 letters via the Global Forever stamp for $1.20 (USA) to see if service to Thailand was the same as it was 10+ years ago. To my surprise, not one of the letters arrived at our house in Ubon. Lessons learned: If sending any letter to Thailand make sure your using a must higher priority or to be very safe send it via FedEx or UPS. Has anyone else here had the same problem with mail to Thailand?

[Celsius]

6 minutes ago, Dan747 said:

Lessons learned: If sending any letter to Thailand make sure your using a must higher priority or to be very safe send it via FedEx or UPS. Has anyone else here had the same problem with mail to Thailand?

 

Strange. Maybe after 10++ years you still don't know how to write your Thai address?

[CharlieH]

Sadly this probably has nothing to do with the Post Office generally and probably everything to to do with the local Postie ! This is why many prefer POBox and go collect it.

(Regions/towns/villages may vary ????)

[proton]

We even get True bills only sporadically and quite often other peoples letters, especially bank suff delivered to us in error.

[phetphet]

I have found our postal service here in Samui to be pretty good. Whenever I send parcels or letters, I always ask for 'Tracked and to be signed for.' Especially when I send from Europe or the UK.

Edited April 23, 2023 by phetphet

[ukrules]

8 minutes ago, phetphet said:

I have found our postal service here in Samui to be pretty good. Whenever I send parcels or letters, I always ask for 'Tracked and to be signed for.' Especially when I send from Europe or the UK.

Yeah, it's the normal untracked stuff that can go missing.

 

I once went about 2 years without receiving any mail even though I was signed up to various services which billed me monthly and definitely mailed out invoices / statements.

 

I believe whoever was 'doing the deliveries' must have retired because it's service as normal now.

 

Once something tracked did not get delivered and I went down there and told them I know it's in this building, then I said "go and get it' which was duly translated. They managed to find it pretty quickly at that point. Kept me waiting weeks before I bothered to go down there.

 

Edited April 23, 2023 by ukrules

[In the jungle]

I use a correspondence address in the UK because of the unreliability of Thailand Post.

 

Post that arrives at the UK address is scanned and emailed to me.

[Liverpool Lou]

2 hours ago, Dan747 said:

I decided to send 10 letters via the Global Forever stamp for $1.20 (USA) to see if service to Thailand was the same as it was 10+ years ago. To my surprise, not one of the letters arrived at our house in Ubon.

Perhaps USPS had something to do with the issue?   I get normal post from the UK to Bangkok with no issues, takes about 5 days normally.

[Liverpool Lou]

10 minutes ago, In the jungle said:

I use a correspondence address in the UK because of the unreliability of Thailand Post.

 

I use normal Thailand Post (or Royal Mail the other way) to actual addresses because of the reliability I've experienced every time.   

[timendres]

Every year several birthday cards are posted to me from the US to Bangkok.

Each and every one arrived, albeit weeks after my birthday.

[In the jungle]

1 hour ago, Liverpool Lou said:

I use normal Thailand Post (or Royal Mail the other way) to actual addresses because of the reliability I've experienced every time.   

In my experience reliability varies.

 

Thai Post was pretty reliable at my last address.

 

At my current address in a different province Thai Post is very unreliable.

[DrDave]

After moving into our newly built house in Phuket, we noticed that we weren't receiving any mail. After a while we went to the post office to see why, and were were instructed to go into the back operations area and talk to someone. We discovered that they keep a timeworn notebook in which they hand-draw maps with the location of "new" addresses. In our case, the house was on a well-known existing soi alongside lots of other homes, but with the house number being new (and house numbers not running sequentially), the postman probably didn't bother to find the house. Once the house number was entered into the notebook at the post office, we began to receive mail.

[NE1]

I just received a letter from UK Pensions , it arrived yesterday , the date on the letter head is the 13th March the post mark on the envelope is the 16th March.

In the first paragraph of the letter it states " I must return the document within 25 days ".

 

Yeh okay.

Edited April 23, 2023 by NE1

[In the jungle]

3 minutes ago, NE1 said:

I just received a letter from UK Pensions , it arrived yesterday , the date on the letter head is the 13th March the post mark on the envelope is the 16th March.

In the first paragraph of the letter it states " I must return the document within 25 days ".

 

Yeh okay.

 

I had a similar situation with a UK bank.  "If we do not receive a reply within 28 days your account will be suspended."

 

The letter arrived after the 28 day deadline.  The account was suspended and it could only be reactivated by a visit in person to a branch of the bank in the UK.

[Puccini]

3 hours ago, Liverpool Lou said:

Perhaps USPS had something to do with the issue?   I get normal post from the UK to Bangkok with no issues, takes about 5 days normally.

Perhaps its more like described here:

 

[Liverpool Lou]

13 hours ago, Puccini said:

Perhaps its more like described here:

 

Perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps it's more like I described, USPS is notoriously awful.

[CH1961]

21 hours ago, In the jungle said:

Post that arrives at the UK address is scanned and emailed to me.

You really like other people reading your mail? 

[In the jungle]

1 hour ago, CH1961 said:

You really like other people reading your mail? 

Somebody I have known for over forty years opens the post.  I have no problem with them opening dull correspondence from banks, lawyers and the government.

[Bangkok Barry]

On 4/23/2023 at 2:08 PM, Celsius said:

 

Strange. Maybe after 10++ years you still don't know how to write your Thai address?

I assume you meant to say 'your address in Thai'. And nor does anyone else in the entire world outside of Thailand. Which is why the postal authorities need to/are supposed to understand English.

As it it, I wanted to send a letter from the Nana post office in Bangkok to Kalasin, and she wanted to know what country Kalasin is in. So they appear to not know very much.

[In the jungle]

1 minute ago, Bangkok Barry said:

I assume you meant to say 'your address in Thai'. And nor does anyone else in the entire world outside of Thailand. Which is why the postal authorities need to/are supposed to understand English.

As it it, I wanted to send a letter from the Nana post office in Bangkok to Kalasin, and she wanted to know what country Kalasin is in. So they appear to not know very much.

I presume you told her redneck country ????

[Bangkok Barry]

On 4/23/2023 at 2:13 PM, CharlieH said:

Sadly this probably has nothing to do with the Post Office generally and probably everything to to do with the local Postie ! This is why many prefer POBox and go collect it.

(Regions/towns/villages may vary ????)

Yes. We discovered that for about 18 months, a period during which we received almost no mail, the postman was burning it as that was much less trouble than actually delivering it. He was replaced by a nephew, so now delivery is assured. In my native UK the errant postman would have been arrested for interrupting the Queen's mail. In Thailand, apparently, nothing happened and he was allowed to retire.

[Golden Triangle]

On 4/23/2023 at 2:08 PM, Celsius said:

 

Strange. Maybe after 10++ years you still don't know how to write your Thai address?

Knob

[Bangkok Barry]

21 hours ago, NE1 said:

I just received a letter from UK Pensions , it arrived yesterday , the date on the letter head is the 13th March the post mark on the envelope is the 16th March.

In the first paragraph of the letter it states " I must return the document within 25 days ".

 

Yeh okay.

I've had that problem from UK Pensions and others that I have pensions with, checking that I'm not dead yet. A quick email to them explaining the delay in responding does the trick.

[TigerandDog]

Not just mail from overseas to Thailand. Lodged my tax return in early January, received a text from e-revenue on 19th Jan advising refund cheques was posted on 18th Jan. Cheque has never been received.  Went to revenue office on 3rd March advising that cheque had not been received. A stop payment was issued and a request for a replacement cheque was submitted. Received another e-revenue text on 17th March advising replacement cheque was posted on 16th March. Still waiting for it to arrive. Revenue office claims that refunds for foreigners cannot be paid into a bank account as an electronic funds transfer AND they refuse to send cheques by EMS or registered post. So if Revenue Dept have actually sent the cheques, what have Thai Post done with them?

[Apostle41]

Funny you should bring this up because after waiting over 2 months for a Bible I bought in America to get to me here in Chainat Province the company just reimbursed me, straight away.

I asked who to approach re the supplied tracking number and they could tell me, just refunded. Picking this is a regular experience with this country! 

Apostle 41.

[Zenwind]

I’ve lived in Thailand for 17 years at the same address (in Bangkruai, Nonthaburi), and postal service here has always been sketchy.  But it is much worse since the Covid pandemic.  I rarely get any mail at all.  Christmas cards from family in the USA no longer arrive.  Monthly bank statements from the USA will only arrive maybe one out of ten.  Important bank packages have been returned to the US as “undeliverable”. 

Over the years, I found that sending mail to the USA is impossible through the Thai Post – it never arrives.  I use DHL to get it there. 

The US Postal Service is famously bad, but these clowns in my Thai province make the USPS look competent. 

[Maybole]

I cannot speak for other countries

. After retirement,  I worked temporarily for the Royal Mail in a mainly automated mail centre. Many companies used automated mail printing and addressing companies for routine mail. Almost all were sent out with UK 2nd class postage, and thus any to an overseas address were rejected by the machines and returned to sender. I very much doubt if they were ever resent with the correct postage. Banks, Pension management companies and UK government mail was almost universally underpriced.

[CH1961]

14 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

UK Pensions and others that I have pensions with, checking that I'm not dead yet.

UK pension/still alive-check is done via letter-post? 

 

I can't believe that. 

But wait, it's UK. 

[Bangkok Barry]

42 minutes ago, CH1961 said:

15 hours ago, Bangkok Barry said:

UK Pensions and others that I have pensions with, checking that I'm not dead yet.

UK pension/still alive-check is done via letter-post? 

 

I can't believe that. 

But wait, it's UK. 

They send a form to complete, countersigned by some local person of importance vouching for me. Rather like (still?) having to have a person of standing countersigning a passport application?

[mrwebb8825]

while living out in the provinces a friend was shopping in BKK and found Kraft Mac-N-Cheese. He asked if I wanted some and I said yes. He mailed it and I'm still waiting. That was around 19 years ago. ????