Related Articles
A WOMAN who tried to send her ill mum a special 80th birthday present was devastated when the parcel was lost for two months, travelled hundreds of miles to Germany and then came back.
Martina Lewis, from Park North, attempted to send a package to Hamburg on June 2. But she was mystified when the parcel went missing and suddenly arriving back at her address in the UK 56 days later.
Despite Martina having paid £12.50 for the track and trace system when she posted the parcel on May 26, she had no information about it’s whereabouts until a message saying it had been signed for in Swindon on July 6, but she had not received it.
“What I really couldn’t understand was that nobody really cared that my parcel was supposedly stuck for two months in Swindon and nobody could locate it,” she said.
“I kept asking if it is in Swindon then please could someone go and find it so I can at least resend it.”
The lay minister at Wroughton Parish Church was unable to go to Germany because of the pandemic so she sent her mum Traudel a personalised T shirt to mark her eighth decade because she was unable to travel to Germany due to the pandemic. Her mother was being treated in hospital for heart trouble.
Martina said: “It was very difficult to not see my mum on her birthday, and then all the hospital treatment and finally this trouble with the parcel. It was devastating to be honest, I was really upset about it.
“It wasn’t a present for keeps so to speak, it was all things to make the day nicer.”
The package contained a candle, confetti, streamers, and balloons, among other items.
She said: “It was all the sorts of things that would make her room nice because I could not come and make it nice for her. So it was not a big present, it was just stuff that was specific to the 80th birthday and this was important to me.
“So I was absolutely devastated that it didn’t arrive on time,” Martina added. “Especially because I just didn’t know if this would be her last birthday. I couldn’t go over there and she didn’t even have the parcel. It’s just one of those things you can’t go back and do again. It was the personal touch, I packed it with love and she would have known that.
“I had kind of given up and just thought that’s that, it’s just going to be lost,” she said. The track and trace said it was signed for in Swindon so I thought it was somewhere in Swindon and I hoped someone appreciated it.
“It was so peculiar for it to just turn up and no one could tell me where it had been,” she said.
Going back again to the Royal Mail Martina then discovered the journey her parcel had been on.
She said: “It had actually arrived in Germany three days after I sent it off, and there it was 20 minutes away from where my mum lived. So it’s totally crazy that it didn’t get delivered.
“Apparently they then tried to deliver it to a place called Louisburg in Germany, which I’ve never even heard of.”
The parcel was then lost for two weeks before being picked up by the system and returned to the UK. Though it would be another month before Martina finally received it.
“What really annoyed me the most was the track and trace did not give me all the details despite my having paid for it. I could have intervened because I’m German speaking. I could have phoned up and said you’ve got the parcel, deliver it here.”
“All I had was a message saying it had been sent and the painful waiting while my mum getting worse – she had three operations within three weeks,” said Martina.
The Adver approached the Royal Mail for comment.
