Due to the coronavirus, one of my friend in China asked me to purchase some surgical masks from India for the people in her company. I am now visiting IIT Delhi and thought that would be a fairly easy thing to help.
With the help of a local graduate student, we went to a whole-sale market to get the masks. Originally in the phone the sale person promised 2-rupee per mask, then when we arrived in the store and talked about the price, he immediately raised it to 8-rupee per mask. Anyway, in short, I finally decided to purchase masks in the store. First they brought a lot of dirty old masks to us and I refused to accept them. After spending almost 5 hours there, we finally got 3000 surgical masks.
Then we immediately went to the post office (around 7 pm) and shipped them by EMS. The total postage was more than 5800 rupees. The post office guy promised us that it would arrived in China on Monday. The date we shipped was Jan. 31, 2020, a Friday.
Later on Monday we tracked the packages, and they still stayed in post office. Soon we figured out what was wrong, the Indian Government issued a notice on Jan. 31, banning all shipment of any kind of masks to China. So the packages were later went to the Foreign Post Office, and was detained there.
On Feb. 20 I received a letter from this Foreign Post Office and asked me to present some documents which I had no idea, see the letter below. The Indian student helped me to find the other Public Notice issued on Feb. 8 that the Indian Government lifted the ban, and allowed all other masks, except N95, to ship to China. The letter was originally initiated on Feb. 6, and signed by the Deputy Commissioner on Feb. 10.
The Indian student and I booked an Uber and went to the Foreign Post Office in the afternoon of Feb. 21, 2020. In the reception desk, we were first asked to go to the 6th floor to pick up the detained packages. We went there but the person in 6th floor refused to give us the packages, saying we need get permission from someone in an office on 3rd floor.
Then the lady in the 3rd floor office looked at the documents we presented, and asked us to talk to the Commissioner’s office in the first floor.
We went to the first floor and the guy we talked to said that we need to talk directly to the Deputy Commissioner, but he was out, and asked us to wait outside.
After waited for more than 10 minutes, the student told me that maybe I shall just knock the door of the commissioner’s office and told him the purpose and using my title as a professor from an US university.
So I knocked that door, a small alarm was sounded but after a while the Commissioner was kind to let me in and asked me the situation. I tried to explain to him while the Deputy Commissioner came in, so he took over. We talked to him, showed the documents, and new Public Notice. The Deputy Commissioner then asked me to write a letter to request the release of the packages. He signed the letter and asked us to go to another building to present this to EMS people.
So we went again, talked to the EMS staff for more 15 minutes. They told us that in order to get the package back, I have to claim that I gave up the postage I paid during my shipping, which was more than 5800 rupees. Then I could ship the packages again in Post Office with additional 5800 rupees.
I argued that this was wrong because the EMS never shipped the packages to China, supposedly they were still under a contract (with the postage receipts) and they either should refund me or continue to ship the packages to China with no additional charge. But they said that I must claim to give up previous postage, otherwise I would not get the packages back.
The student and I then went to see the deputy commissioner again. He was not happy with the presence of us, telling us that he was only responsible for Customs and was not responsible for Post Office.
No other places or persons we could talk and I decided to give up, and we went back to the EMS office building. Then I was forced to add a sentences in the letter to claim giving up the postage (see the sentence “I shall not claim postage in the future”).
After all these we asked whether we could pick up our packages by ourselves since they were in the building. The staff told us not. They would ship these packages to us (IIT) by mail. After several conversations with the student, the staff finally said that we needed to get a special permission from their supervisor. Then we went to talk to that lady who was the supervisor, showed my passport, my IIT ID, and finally she agreed. After another 10 minutes or so, and signed several pages of the copies on my ID, the staff told us to go to the 6th floor to pick the packages.
So we went again to 6th floor, waited, talked to a young man. He seemed ok for us to take the packages with us. Then he asked his uncle who seemed to be the head in that office. The uncle refused to give the packages to us. He insisted that they would mail the packages to us. After more than 10 minutes conversations, the young man promised us to deliver the packages to my IIT office tomorrow.
So we had to go back. Who knows when the packages would arrive to my office. The notification letter was sent out on Feb 10 by EMS, and it arrived in my office on Feb. 20! The Foreign Post Office is only 11 km away from IIT Delhi!
So after the entire afternoon, literally and officially the Indian EMS robbed more than 5800 rupees from me!
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