As anybody who has lived here for a while knows the postal service is not very good. Unfortunately there are still things that have to be sent as UK banks and the like trust a paper envelope that can be opened by anyone more than they trust an email that requires a password to open it. My bank sent an important letter to my UK address, i need to have the actual letter, not a scan, the last time this happened my daughter sent it by registered mail which can't be tracked once it reaches Manila, this meant a lot of trips to the post office and around 3 months later it arrived. The same thing came up again last month so this time i thought we have to use a courier, the prices were amazing for just a letter weighing very little, from over £100 to £23, so i picked the £23 which was UPS. When i tracked it on Friday it had some journey, left UK on 31stMay, went through Germany then China and was in Manila by the 2nd June, by 6th it had not arrived so i tracked it again, on the way but still in Manila, how can it be on the way when still in Manila. I sent UPS an enquiry and they replied that it was now with their "partner" arrgh arrgh (no name or contact provided) and could take between 4 and 7 business days to reach Dumaguete. Manila is the black hole
A printed scan is just about indistinguishable from the original, with few exceptions (watermark, seal, etc.)
Took 8 months for some letters from the UK to arrive here at my house, my UK bank was expediting a reply from some of the letters. They closed my UK account down and sent my royal mail post office pension back and some direct debits payments form my Dutch shell shares. Now I have to send the Royal mail post office forms and dutch shell that I have a UK bank account which I don't have. F'KIN hell. Flip Flops get a grip. Do other Asian countries have the some problems?
I would suggest trying to contact the companies in the UK or other countries that provide the balikbayan services, I'm sure for a nominal fee, they would let the letter hijack a box (you can guarantee the box would show up in Manila) then have them LBC it to you
On Friday when i tracked my delivery the message had changed to delay but with no explanation. I called the UPS office in Manila and after a lot of questions and being on hold the short story was they didn't know where it was and i should start the claim process which could take 10 business days. I asked who was the "partner" they passed the delivery on to and was told Air21, they have an office in Dumaguete so i went there and a very nice woman went and found it no problem, i asked her when it arrived and she said yesterday (Thursday), i asked when were they going to deliver it to me and was told she did not know as the delivery boy has been off sick all week. So that's UPS off of my list of people i want to give money to.
From hindsight, anyone reading this who is intending to move here or is going back home soon before returning: Open as many bank accounts as you can. They are closing down accounts so fast and putting cheques in the post (even though they say they want to phase out cheques) that people need multiple alternatives. I had two banks and now have one - so am now concerned about that one. As @jimeve says, payers will ask to transfer money to a payee's new bank account and if he has none then he may need to fly home just to create it. It seems that tougher legislation was introduced in 2019 and banks are having to check on clients yearly - so if you have no address in your home country, you may be buggered. We come back again to either getting the money into crypto (at a big risk) but some banks (e.g. NatWest) are restricting their customers from using their own money to buy cryptos (funny how banks help protect us by holding onto out money). WISE may be an alternative but funds are not protected in the FSCS sense. With WISE you can put the money in as £s or USDs (or up to 50 currencies I think) and swap them within the account (including into Php) as required. Another possibility to consider is setting up bank accounts here and using International Transfers to them from your home country (they will probably ask you to do the first ones in person) - these can be quite cheap but will be in the currency you have in your current bank or you will lose a lot in the banks' very mean exchange rates.
Had once sent a fast urgency letter to Negros from Switzerland. In 2 days it arrived in Manila but then stuck there for whooping 4 weeks. Because DHL passed the letter to the Philpost instead of using DHL Philippines. I got the money back for the delivery cost because the 5 days at the destination rule was missed by about the factor 6.
You did well. You'd never get a refund from Australia Post...LOL..They are routinely laggard on their premium posted items. Their delivery estimations are an aspiration - nothing to do with reality.
From AU post I should also have expected a more generous attitude when it comes to a refund. I did order something in AU online and their estimated conveyance time was 2 weeks. Reality it took 2 months and they blame the whole world responsible for this delay (such as the aircarrier, customs in MNL, PhilPost) but not their own service. It took more than one month to get the item from AU to MNL................!!!!
