Gift Voucher stolen from Birthday Card

Chip Whitley

Hi all,

recently myself and my girlfriend bought a €50 Gift Voucher from Smyths. We put it in a Birthday Card and sent it to the recipient via An Post (unregistered). When they received the card there was a small, neat slit in the end of the card and the Gift Voucher was gone.

We called Smyths and asked them if they could cancel the voucher but as it was over a week since we had bought the voucher we didn't have the receipt. We were able to supply a date and time but without a receipt Smyths said it would be like 'looking for a needle in a haystack'.

Is it safe to assume this was done during the An Post sorting process?

Is there any course of action we can take from here? €50 is a lot of money to us and I don't want to let this go easily. Has anyone had any experience like this?

TIA

Menas

This seems to be more and more common this last while.
I sent a memory stick to my sister (dublin to dublin) and the envelope was slit and stick removed. That was in june.
My mum sent some cash in a card in july and it too was slit and money removed.
There is no comeback unless the letter was insured but do make a point of complaining to An Post. Hopefully if they get enough complaints they will do something about it.
Not sure if it is the post office, sorting office or postman who is doing this.

dudara

You should complain to An Post, but unfortunately without registering/insuring the letter you have no comeback.

Bear in mind that it may have happened during the sorting process, but it may not be intentional. Any bugles in an envelope make the envelope more susceptible to tearing/being torn at those points.

Chip Whitley

Thanks for the replies. Will complain to An Post alright but not hopeful for a happy outcome. Baffles me that someone would steal a voucher or memory stick but still make sure the letter reaches its destination. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to steal whats in an envelope and then destroy the letter and say 'it got lost in the post'? :(

hdowney

voucher i can completely understand. same with cash. untraceable. nothing on it to say it should be in x persons property therefore the person presenting/using it doesn't have to prove they are the rightful owner. the memory stick one is a little odd i'll grant you, but whoever robbed it didn't likely know exactly what was in the package until they slit it open. cards are generally quite obvious post and it is a fair assumption that whoever sent the card stuck cash or a voucher inside the card so it is a safe bet for whoever is robbing. A LOT of cards have this happen to them (not just in Ireland i am also talking about the UK), especially around Christmas when the volume of cards is exponentially higher.

rubadub

hdowney wrote: »

A LOT of cards have this happen to them (not just in Ireland i am also talking about the UK), especially around Christmas when the volume of cards is exponentially higher.

I have also heard at christmas they take on extra part time staff who may be more likely to be on the rob.

I got smyths vouchers online before sent direct to the kid, cost an extra €3.50 though, I was not impressed but I figured I had more comeback. You can add a birthday not to it. I used to love getting official looking post as a kid.

Miaireland

I have heard of this happening more and more often. I know my mother now sends birthday cards/Christmas cards contain vouchers etc in Brown envelopes and uses printed labels so they appear like business letters to avoid this.

Shelflife

Chip Whitley wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Will complain to An Post alright but not hopeful for a happy outcome. Baffles me that someone would steal a voucher or memory stick but still make sure the letter reaches its destination. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to steal whats in an envelope and then destroy the letter and say 'it got lost in the post'? :(

Because the recipient wont know that there was a note or gift voucher in the card unless you make reference to it. So they would just think that you sent a card on its own.That way the receipt of the card is acknowledged and therefore the receipt of the gift is implied.

TheDoc

Chip Whitley wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Will complain to An Post alright but not hopeful for a happy outcome. Baffles me that someone would steal a voucher or memory stick but still make sure the letter reaches its destination. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to steal whats in an envelope and then destroy the letter and say 'it got lost in the post'? :(

This happens absolutely all the time. As someone who has a father as a Postman, he is pretty livid when he hears family members sending money or vouchers in the post, unregistered.

Basically you need to register them, or take out optional insurance on them. If registered the package or letter is signed for at various steps, and there is accountability.

Unregistered you basically have little to no comeback, as there is no signatures or signbacks. While a Postman typically sorts his own mail depending on the area, some officers run separate sorters, and in some cases another postman might be covering a route while someone is off sick or has to go do something.

So there is no trail what so ever, and no dates that can tie back to who was working which bench etc.

To be honest its not a recent phenomenon, its something going on 20+ years, and rule of thumb is never send something like a voucher, money etc. via post, without it being registered.

I actually cant believe people still send cash in envelopes, unregistered.

TheDoc

Chip Whitley wrote: »

Thanks for the replies. Will complain to An Post alright but not hopeful for a happy outcome. Baffles me that someone would steal a voucher or memory stick but still make sure the letter reaches its destination. Wouldn't it make more sense for someone to steal whats in an envelope and then destroy the letter and say 'it got lost in the post'? :(

A lost letter or package actually goes through a process that brings back more prying eyes that if they deliver the letter, without the stolen item inside. As it wasn't registered, there is no verification of what was actually inside.

Sunny Dayz

We have posted a few times to my husband's aunt in America - wedding invite, thank you cards, Christmas cards etc. She has never received them despite us having the correct address, we never had anything in the envelope only the card. But yet she was able to post us a wedding card from the States with cash inside it and we received it no problem!!

rubadub

I seem to remember in an old guinness book of records one of the longest prison sentences was for a US postman who failed to deliver letters, he was routinely dumping them for years, I think just lazy rather than robbing. I think it was treated as a federal crime and he had was sentenced to 100's of years since there were so many.

I would like to see the same enforcement as this on some crimes. If you are criminally minded you would simply not take up the job if your intention was to rob, bicycle theft would be one I think should have harsher punishments.

peppa 1986

My dunnes stores value club vouchers were intercepted in the post and used in a local dunnes stores. 30 euro worth. Got no comeback from an post or dunnes

xalot

Recently we have not received three separate wedding invitations, we seem to get our normal post so I think that since these envelopes are fancy looking 'someone' thinks there might be money or vouchers in them. It has made us look really rude for not rsvp-ing to the invites which we never received.

My Aunt in the states used to send us cash in the post when we were kids and would wrap it in tinfoil as apparently it wouldn't show up in the some kind of scanner that the thieves used!

Curb Your Enthusiasm

peppa 1986 wrote: »

My dunnes stores value club vouchers were intercepted in the post and used in a local dunnes stores. 30 euro worth. Got no comeback from an post or dunnes

Do they not need to have your ValueClub card to use them, like in Tesco?

ScouseMouse

I think its kinda obvious now that the general postal service is not secure. I sent a birthday card to my niece in liverpool with 50 quid in it. I put inside a larger brown envelope with a strip of cardboard to disguise it.

It did get there. Sad I have to go to all that trouble though.

Sunny Dayz

xalot wrote: »

Recently we have not received three separate wedding invitations, we seem to get our normal post so I think that since these envelopes are fancy looking 'someone' thinks there might be money or vouchers in them. It has made us look really rude for not rsvp-ing to the invites which we never received.

A few of our wedding invites never made it to our guests, even though they were all posted at the one time. I can't understand why a wedding invitation would be taken though, it's kinda obvious when it's a wedding invite, most have a wedding stamp on them and a seal or sticker on the back - nobody puts money or valuables in with a wedding invite so it's pointless robbing one!!

selous

Anyone think of ringing and asking for the lost property section, if the letter gets torn going thru the sorting machines and things fall out, its where it goes, same as some stick on address labels get torn off during same process I believe, or just prefer to believe its nicked 100% of the time, just saying.

razzler

Techmaster wrote: »

Do they not need to have your ValueClub card to use them, like in Tesco?

A lot of customers get highly annoyed when cashier wants to check that the customer has the clubcard matching thr number on the voucher, so staff mostly don't verify that they are the real owners of the vouchers. It would mean getting grief every few minutes.

él statutorio

I seem to recall there was an issue in the Baldoyle sorting office last year or before that, where someone may have (or may not have)had sticky fingers in there.

* edit* found it

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056887745

Mango Joe

Kenny Logins wrote:

€100 more on a different tablet just to avoid the possibility of a problem that might never happen..?

I bought a postal order in a Limerick City post office a while back, popped it in the envelope and asked the girl behind the counter where to post it and she pointed out the fat **** An Post worker with a post bag in his hand emptying the letters to take to his van <SNIP>

Needless to say it never arrived at destination.....

Curb Your Enthusiasm

Mango Joe wrote: »

I bought a postal order in a Limerick City post office a while back, popped it in the envelope and asked the girl behind the counter where to post it and she pointed out the fat **** An Post worker with a post bag in his hand emptying the letters to take to his van <SNIP>

Needless to say it never arrived at destination.....

So you cancelled it?

StereoSound

This thread worry's me. I got a new credit card in the post a few weeks back and there was a slit in the envelobe where the complete envelope contents could be slipped out. My credit card was there but now I'm thinking after reading this thread someone could have jotted down the numbers on my card. Hmm

Menas

StereoSound wrote: »

This thread worry's me. I got a new credit card in the post a few weeks back and there was a slit in the envelobe where the complete envelope contents could be slipped out. My credit card was there but now I'm thinking after reading this thread someone could have jotted down the numbers on my card. Hmm

If you suspect your card was compromised in transit then contact the card issuer, explain your concerns and ask them to re-issue. Should not be a problem.

solerina

I got a letter from the local Gardai during the summer to say my post was part of a large volume of mail that had items stolen from it, I have no idea what post of mine is missing, A case was about to be brought and it would be up in court in the autumn. This type of fraud is obviously quite common, report it OP...maybe they will do something about it.