SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A Yellowknife family is relieved to have received their passports after their documents were lost in the mail for weeks.
Hue Lieu displays the three passports her family had lost in the mail for nearly two weeks. The family runs P&T Alterations & Embroidery in Centre Square Mall. - Laura Busch/NNSL photo
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Tai Tran had been calling the national postal service daily for 10 days to inquire about the three passports that belonged to him and his parents. Each day, he was told the package could not be located. The family has plans to travel to their native Vietnam in July, and Tran has a trip to Las Vegas planned in mid-April.
Meanwhile, the package had arrived in Yellowknife and was sitting in the postal service at Shoppers Drug Mart – complete with Tran's name and phone number. However, no one ever called him and the family did not receive a card in their post office box telling them the parcel had arrived.
"They told me it was lost," Tran told Yellowknifer.
Fearing he would have to cancel his Las Vegas trip, Tran booked a non-refundable ticket to Edmonton, where the nearest passport office is located, to rush a new passport.
All three family members had filled out passport replacement forms and Tran was prepared to issue lost passport paperwork to the RCMP the day before the parcel was found. Once notification of a lost passport is sent out, the passport becomes null and void.
"I don't know the point of putting the name and phone number on the package if nobody calls," Tran told Yellowknifer. "I think they should take care of their customers better."
Tran and his parents know a few things about customer service. Since moving to Yellowknife from Vietnam in January 1999, the family opened a business: P&T Alterations & Embroidery in Centre Square Mall.
The planned two-week trip in July will be the first time Tran's father, Van Tran, will return to his home country since leaving 14 years ago.
"We're looking forward to this trip a lot," said Tai.
When Yellowknifer visited Tai and his mother, Hue Lieu, at their store on Monday, the Canada Post website still stated the parcel was "in transit" from Edmonton – despite the fact the date on the parcel states the passports arrived in Yellowknife on March 2.
In the end, the passports were located because the Shoppers Drug Mart postal service had returned the envelope to the main Canada Post office in Yellowknife after the package sat so long without being picked up. A worker at the post office recognized Tai's name from his many calls searching for the package and contacted him.
The Shoppers Drug Mart post office is an outlet store for Canada Post, and it is the responsibility of the postal service to contact customers when their parcels have arrived, according to a worker at the Shoppers Drug Mart postal service, who asked not to be named.
Canada Post spokesperson Joelle Hamilton stated in an e-mail response that mistakes were made in shipping the passports. She also stated all documents sent through the mail carrier's Xpresspost service, such as was the case with the three passports, should be signed for upon delivery.
"We take delivery of important documents very seriously," stated Hamilton."We apologize to Mr. Tran for his experience as it was not up to our customer service standards. We are reviewing the case to take the necessary steps to prevent it from happening again."
