In October I bought Victory At Sea from 1954 from Del here at the forum. It is a Super 8 4x400'. And man am I happy I bought it from a great seller that I trust, since this showed up to be the history of how much trouble the postal service can cause.

The parcel was sent the 24th of October. It reached Norway and got to the customs. The customs service handled the customs and then was supposed to pass it on to my home address. But then something funny happened: They must look me up in their system as the customs is to be registered on my personally. Then for a strange reason, they don't just pass the parcel on, they pick my home address and send it to there no matter what the parcel says. What I learned now is that they in addition to my home address has registered a secondary address that is my parents address. I moved out from there in 1998, but they have that still registered to me. So some person in the customs managed to pass the parcel on to my parents as he/she picked my secondary address and not my primary address. This has happened once before for me, but at that stage I didn't know how that happened.

So far it was not a huge problem. I could ask my parents to pick it up, but since I was not going there in a little while I called the postal service and asked to get it sent to my correct address. They had a picture of the parcel taken at arrival in Oslo before it was sent to my parents, so they could confirm it had been wrongly sent to my parents and found it very strange as my home address was clearly written on the front.

So at this stage the parcel had traveled from Del's home place, through Coventry for export, Oslo parcel center in Norway, Hamar parcel center and then my parents home place. I expected to get it in a day or two, but that didn't happen. Weeks passed, and I made a lot of calls to the postal service, and they looked for it twice at the post office where my parents live, at my home post office and it didn't show up. That is strange as it should show up at Hamar parcel center which is the first sorting facility. I contacted Del when time passed and he declared it missing at the Norwegian postal service's advice. For some strange reason I as the receiver couldn't declare it missing. So I was happy to have a seller I trust in the other end as not all sellers are as helpful and this was trouble caused at the Norwegian end.

After three weeks when I had lost all hope it showed up in Del's home town. It had then passed Hamar, Oslo and Coventry without being scanned. Any scanning at all three places should have made it show up on the tracking and also alert the postal service as a lost parcel. How is that even possible? The postal service said it was possible to slip a scanning if it was laying beneath a bigger parcel, but doing that twice was very unlikely. So doing that three times should be next to impossible. And in addition it should take no more than 10 days to get between those places, and it took three weeks. I will never know what really happened to that parcel in that period.

But I was happy as it was not lost and would be delivered back to the sender. Well I THOUGHT it would, as it the next day showed up on the tracking on its way to Coventry. It got through Coventry and back to Oslo. All the better: I would receive my parcel at last!!! On Friday last week it arrived in Oslo again. It had a strange status, but that was nothing new. It had been marked as mis sent many times during ths story already. But on Monday at 2pm I was worried as it should have been on its way to my postal office by now. So I called the postal service again. They agreed to let me declare it missing by now even though I was the receiver and not the sender, and as soon as it was scanned somewhere it should be handled and make sure it was directed to me. Two hours later the tracking said it was exported to Coventry AGAIN!

Back in Coventry it got sent to Del's home town. Again a status saying it was mis sent showed up, so I expected it to be sent back to Norway again. But then the status suddenly changed and it was said it was on its way to Del's home. As we both had followed the tracking and stayed in touch all the way I waited to hear the nightmare end by his confirmation that it had arrived. But the parcel had one more trick in its sleeve:

Del was home, but the tracking suddenly said he was not home and the parcel sent to the postal office nearby. So what had happened? The postal service in the UK didn't use the return address on the parcel. They had written his Neighbor's address on it for return. What do you give me? Both addresses (his return address and my home address) had been clearly written on it, and the Norwegian postal service sent it to my parents and the UK postal service wanted to return it to his neighbor that wasn't home. But finally Del could go to the postal office and pick it up. Almost 6 weeks later.

It is now safe at Del's house. We don't dare to give it an other try in the Christmas rush as the error rate is probably higher then. So sometime in January we make another try :-)

Let me just say I am very happy that Del was the sender. I have received parcels from sellers where the communication was confusing before, and this story would have been a nightmare if I had to deal with a bad or confusing seller on top. So thanks a lot, Del for all the support so far in this mess of a postal story! And I am sorry for all the extra trouble! Now I can finally relax knowing my film is in good hands until we try again after the Christmas postal rush.

But someday after Christmas I will get this parcel so I can enjoy the documentary from WWII :-) And I don't expect anyone to believe that the Norway postal service has a very low error rate. It is actually true :-)

Wow what an incredible tale,I had a similar experience sending films to Norway but it only came back once to me, at least it wasn't completely lost and you'll get it in the new year,something to look forward to, Mark

Eivind,
Sounds like that film was ALMOST caught in an "endless loop" to be shuffled between Coventry and Norway for who knows how long!
I am sure it will work out after the holiday rush of packages subsides....be interesting to see what the parcel looked like with all of the different addresses and postmarks on the box.

So far my "worst" was a couple of films which were correctly sent from Phil & Denise at CHC to Minnesota. But something in the USPS system triggered it as a "Change of Address" item and it was re-directed to one of our sons in another state. Thankfully he got it and knew it was for me so it was not lost or anything.

I will be surprised if anyone here on the forum can beat your package's misadventure, but let's hope not!

It has been an experience to say the least, I am so pleased it is back in Blighty and not lost as these prints can be hard to come by again, I'm sure the new year will bring success and Eivind will receive his film.

If it had import duty to pay , I bet my months wages it would not have got lost ......

What carrier was used from the UK ?

Parcelforce Maurice, after Christmas it might just be UPS, they WILL deliver the parcel.