BENGALURU: The Karnataka Postal Department has been receiving a number of complaints about items booked via Speed Post from the state to various parts of India being replaced by other articles before it reaches recipients. A senior postal official attributed this to handlers en route substituting them with other items and re-packing them.
Assistant Postmaster General (APMG), Business Development, Karnataka Circle, V Tara told The New Indian Express, "The articles despatched by India Post to other states are sent by air or in trucks. There are other agencies which handle them. Items gets replaced somewhere en route without the knowledge of anyone in the department. It is only when the recipient complains to us that the issue comes to light."
The Postal Department is not in a position to offer any full compensation as the exact contents of the parcel are not known, she said. "As of now, we only pay double the amount of the Speed Post charge as compensation. Until the person booking it has insured the particular item with us, we do not have any provision to compensate it," she said.
While business concerns who book items in bulk through the department ignore these occasional lapses, it is individual addressees who make it a point to formally complain to the department, the APMG said. Referring to other complaints, she said a recurring one is that those authorised to collect Speed Post items inside apartments fail to hand it over to the person for whom it is intended.
"We get a complaint and the whole process of tracking it gets under way. Our delivery staff have the acknowledgement of it being collected. Later, we learn that it had been delivered in the apartment, but those authorised to collect it have not alerted the specific house number for which it is intended," she said.
Chief Postmaster General, Karnataka Circle, S Rajendra Kumar said along with brickbats, they also receive appreciation from customers on prompt delivery. "There was a recent incident in which a customer from Hong Kong was delighted with the promptness in which an item despatched to Bengaluru was delivered and sent us a note of appreciation," he said.
The department was not able to provide any data on complaints pertaining to articles that have been substituted so far.