Anyone in Israel who has ordered goods from abroad is likely to be familiar with the trend in which one tries to track a package, but the package falls off the radar after entering Israel. The problem is the package is not scanned by Israel Postal Authority workers in Israel, so after recording a package has arrived in the country, it vanishes off the tracking radar. There is no other body that can provide information – hence, packages simply vanish and become untraceable.

According to international standards, each package not scanned by the Israel Postal Authority is no longer the postal service’s responsibility since it never officially received the package.

November and December are especially busy times for the Israel Postal Authority, which will handle 14.5 million packages during the two-month period. This results in a significant backlog in deliveries as well as a sharp rise in complaints against the service. There are long waits when one attempts to contact customer service, and while ultimately most packages will reach their destination, there are many which will not and there is no agency capable to responding to queries regarding the location of the missing packages.

According to TheMarker report, many Israelis report ordering items from abroad, some stating packages were sent to them, and the packages simply never arrive and there is no address to reach that can provide any information regarding the missing items.

While the norm is to receive a tracking number, packages that are not scanned when they arrive have never entered the system, so officially, they don’t exist. Postal employees explain “that’s not our tracking number” or “go check with the sender” but there is no willingness to launch a probe towards finding a package because it does not have a tracking number, having never been scanned.

At times, filing a complaint may be helpful for some companies may opt to simply pay the recipient rather than the company having to deal with the Israel Postal Authority. This is more likely to occur with large sites like Amazon, as the company is willing to lose money on a special sake to keep the customer.

It comes as no surprise that the Israel Postal Authority reports the loss of packages is very rare and in 2018, the number of packages that did not reach their destination was about 6,000 of 65 million that were delivered. This year, over 70 million packages will be delivered and the number of lost packages has not increased.

According to a poll conducted by Israel’s State Comptroller, released in February 2019, 80% of persons asked stated they never received the package they ordered from abroad. The postal service calls the State Comptroller’s findings “An irrelevant survey since it dealt with 2015 and 2016, during a time period the service was in a crisis, which has since been resolved”.

The postal service explains that for a package to be lost, it has to fall from a container or stolen by workers, which rarely occurs. Officials add at times, packages are incorrectly addressed or labeled, or a package opens enroute.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)