[ From: Rajib Das <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ]
[ Date: Aug 30, 2002 07:04 (-0000) ]
> Does the postal department in your home country take
> the responsibility of ensuring delivery of your
> normal mail? As in provide a GUARANTEE? A service
An emphatic NO. The postal department of any country, in their
right minds, would not "guarantee" the delivery of mail.
Keeping that in mind that, if you had an urgent and important
document to be sent, what would you do ? Turn to some such
service which can provide a guarantee of sorts as far as the time
of delivery is concerned, would you not ? I would presume that
this is exactly why, as you mentioned, you would think of Fedex.
And so, coming back to the case at hand, they, just as you would,
did send it through a service, which for all its claims, is a
service that can be construed to be something like Fedex. As you
would think of Fedex as the first thing when you have to send
something urgently, some people in India can be forgiven for
thinking of "Speedpost" in a similar manner. And, as far as I
remember (that was 10 years back), it did claim to be able to
deliver your mail anywhere in India within 3 working days. And
you do pay a price for it - I remember paying INR 150 to
"Speedpost" a document (that was 10 years back).
With that in mind, if you were to send an important document via
Fedex and had a similar result, what would you do ? I guess then
the normal thing would be for you to ask for compensation from
Fedex, notwithstanding the fact that Fedex would have probably
made you sign off on an agreement form to the effect that they
would only expend "all reasonable means" to deliver your document
on time, unless of course you have insured your document. But,
your case will have some ground in a court because you can argue
that you have used the "Fedex-like" service and NOT the normal
mail primarily because of the service's claims and that in doing
so you have been misled, because had it not been for it's claims,
you would have filled up your forms way ahead of the deadline
knowing jolly well that normal post would take a much longer
time.
Having said that, I agree with your other points and I do NOT
subscribe to the hypotheses that this is yet another classic case
of step-motherly treatment for Assam and that there is a
conspiracy at play.
/amlan.
