Magyar Posta – a service to be proud of?
DESPITE anecdotal evidence to the contrary, Magyar Posta claims it provides a good service, one that brought in a pre-tax profit of Ft5 billion ($26.73 million) in 2004.
Company's contacted by The Budapest Sun, however, tell a different story: one of sending invites out ever earlier or assuming they will go astray.
Two weeks ago the newspaper received an invitation that took 12 days to be delivered, although it only had to come from Andrássy út in Pest's District VII. It arrived two days after the event it was inviting us to. Of 26 packages sent to the office from UK Website Amazon since 2004, 10 have been resends.
Tamás Tomecskó, spokesman for Magyar Posta Rt, told The Budapest Sun that very few letters "go astray" and are delayed.
"Last year we had some problems with our new mail processing and distribution in Budaörs, but there have been very few problems since then," he said.
But then, over two days, we received nearly 100 letters that took around five months to be delivered. All were originally postmarked in early to mid-November, and then again just the day before actual delivery in March. They arrived without any explanation or apology for the delay from the postal service.
Among the 100 or so letters were a number or registered post envelopes, and one package from Germany that we think contained a book intended for review. We say "think" as all we got was the envelope itself, which had been cut open and the contents removed. "By the postal law 85% of all priority letters must arrive to the addressee within one working day, no matter where they are in Hungary, and 97% must be delivered within three working days," said Tomecskó.
"Generally there are no problems and the letter reading machine only makes mistakes if the addressee and postal code is wrong or un-readable," he added. Eighty-five percent of ordinary letters must be delivered within three working days and 97% within five days. The same goes for all letters in the EU, he said.
"THERE is a 3% chance that anything could happen to anyone's letter," said Tomecskó.
He added that he has no idea how a letter could go missing for five months. "We will definitely investigate the issue," he said.
However, he recommended that all parcels arriving from abroad and any important letters be sent by registered post.
"That's really the only way we can trace its route from sender to addressee," he said.
"All inquiries should be started from the post office the letter or parcel was sent from," said Tomecskó. "The whole postal service is based on trust and we will deal very severely with staff members if they are caught [stealing].
"The postal service deals with problems and inquiries on a daily basis, most of these are
resolved in a very short period. All complaints must be investigated and inquiries of post sent to Hungarian and EU destinations must be dealt with within 30 days of the date of inquiry. This can be extended only once, and for another 30 days, after informing the inquirer.
"In many cases we see that Magyar Posta is not responsible or only partly responsible, for the delay.
"Our company does its utmost to ensure that security and technology norms are met, so that no cases of corruption or abuse occurs. Internal abuse and corruption has considerably reduced over the past years."
The post office is overseen by National Communications Authority's Board Nemzeti Hirközlézlési Hatóság (NHH), part of the ministry of telecommunications and information technology.
The ministry sets the standards for Magyar Posta, which are enshrined in law. NHH ensures those standards are met. But The Budapest Sun believes that set up is far to "friendly" to be effective.
Kinga Brezina, spokesperson for the NHH, Katalin Ács-Dömötör, head of the Administration and Supervisory Division of NHH and Mrs Viktor Bôsze, head of the Department Regulating the Postal Services (Postaszabályozási osztály), were all unavailable for comments for this piece. Instead we were referred to Magyar Posta spokesman Tamás Tomecskó.
