Just recently I've shipped a heavy parcel to someone, who forgot to mention a recent address change (moved within the commune and didn't change the address on Ricardo). Understandable from my perspective, there are many other small things can we forget to do when under the stress of moving the household. In the US I had the similar situation a couple of times and it was easily resolved by simply providing a new address, while the parcel is sitting in the local post office. Mistake is a mistake, it is expected to incur some costs, no problem here.

Apparently, Swisspost has a very different policy with wrong addresses. Neither me nor the receiver was able to provide the correct info and to get the parcel delivered or at least held in the local post office. It was immediately (the same day afternoon) sent to a sorting center and marked for a return delivery. Tried to call them (literally 30 minutes in a queue) and was denied any solution. What sense does it make? I can only suggest it generates extra revenue for Swisspost, but that is not a nice way to get it. Both for the ecology and for customers. I would rather pay them extra, if they at least do not physically ship the parcel back and do not force me to collect and ship it again.

Probably because they do not accept address changes on the phone? How would they know it is you changing this and not someone else?


Isn´t there something that can be done online? At least you´d probably log in with a Swiss Pass log in?

Should have clarified that in the first message. I was not trying to do anything just over the phone, it was used as a measure of last resort to get information.

There is no option to change the address or reroute available online (at least I can't locate it, although the parcel is registered in my personal cabinet and the label was created in it), only thing I can do is to subscribe for tracking or ask to change my address, not the "to" address. No useful assistance was provided from a post office (a Post office employee said to call the help line, because he couldn't do anything).

They drown in parcels for over a year now, deliver several times a day (instead of once), deliver even on Saturdays and now they are supposed to store parcels that can't be delivered due to wrong addresses?

Apart from the lack of space for such a thing, how would this be handled? By contacting the sender "Sir, the address you put on that huge sized parcel and wrapped in pink paper can't be delivered what would you like us to do with it?" And they would have to do that by mail as neither your handy-no. nor your email address is on the parcel? (And you most likely you no longer have a house-phone?).
And who's gonna pay the extra staff for this?

I'm not saying it's not a pita for you (while at least it should be the receiver doing the job you're doing now) but if you look at it from the other side - it's just too much to ask for.

I was actually already surprised that when I didn't put enough postage on a letter, they sent me a card, telling me to put stamps worth the difference on it and send it back. (The postage for that card itself was free ) While they delivered my letter, trusting me I would cope.

__________________
It's all a matter or perspective.
So move your butt and look at it from the other side

It is laying around in the sorting center seems like a lesser job, then sending it back and forth, doesn't it?


There is a tracking number and a barcode on the parcel, it somehow shows in my personal cabinet tied to a SwissID, which has all my contact details, including email, phone and other stuff.

Also, they had no problem notifing me about the ongoing return shipping fees, so I bet they have means to contact me.

In my initial post I pointed out, no one denies to pay any, it is natural in this situation.



May be. From my perspective it is an inefficient approach, when they do not allow to correct simple data mistakes and instead do a lot of extra job, which could be easily avoided, let them send me a correction for the address after the mistake was discovered.


What prohibts them from, for example, a 1 day hold at the sorting center, sending me a notification about the wrong address and giving a time to contact the receiver and reroute the package? It can be done completely automatically, as it was with USPS even 10 years ago. If that is that expensive to let the parcel sit in your warehouse for a day, then OK, charge me extra 21CHF for that, I'm fine with that. But sending it all the way back so I could write a new address on the paper and put it back in the Postomat?!




It is not just trust, they can charge you much more including the processing fees, if you don't pay the difference in time.

Get the item back then bill the buyer for the extra costs.

Did the buyer change their address with the post office when they moved? If they did so, the package would be forwarded but with an extra charge to the recipient.

I was also wondering this... can't the recipient usually call the Post to get the delivery address changed?

it's not user friendly but for a huge logistics company it makes sense imho. Organizing a way to deal with this sort of spontaneous situations would be expensive. Or be very mistake-prone and lead to lost packets.

You make a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

In this case: even though the buyer has not changed his/her address on ricardo.ch, he/she apparently hasn't notified the post office of the address change either (otherwise parcel would have been forwarded to current address).

I'd charge the extra cost to the buyer.

And they would be able to satisfy themselves that you were the genuine recipient how exactly?

This.

How do you prove you are legit?

I had a similar case a couple of months ago. Parcel was en route to my old (old old, haven't lived there in 10 years) address. I always notified post office when I moved.

Called the post office, asked them to stop delivery and send it to the current address.

They told me that they cannot verify identity by phone so no changes while a parcel is being delivered ... but, "no worries, we know where you live, parcel is going to get there and then we are going to send it to the new address" (they ended up delivering the parcel to the old address anyway, but that's another story!!!! -> they went back, picked it up again and forwarded to the right address).

By sending a copy of a bill or something similar with the old address on it, along with an ausweis, as evidence of who you are.

It's a shame everyone doesn't have their online Post.ch accounts set up, because they send you automatic notifications of every delivery that enters the system that is coming to you, along with options to change the delivery address.