Mr. CHEUNG Wan Ching, Clement, JP
Postmaster General Hong Kong
General Post Office, 2 Connaught Place,
Central, Hong Kong
12th February, 2010
Reference: Complaint about existing Post Office’s Procedure
I would like to draw your attention to an incident which occurred in September 2009 regarding an alleged mail theft due to deficiency of existing Post Office’s procedures.
According to the complainant, she received a mail-holding notification from the Post Office in September 2009 although she and her husband (i.e. the recipients) did not make such request. The request was assumed to be made by a suspect by fulfilling the current mail-holding procedure of the Post Office – the provision of a written request and the recipient’s ID copy, simply by means of Fax. The suspect then submitted an authorization letter to the Post Office for a third party to collect the mail, again by means of Fax. The suspect eventually succeeded in collecting the mail, including letters with recipient’s private information from banks and credit card companies (please find the enclosed for more details).
The complainant is of the view that Post Office’s approval of the faxed authorization of the recipient’s ID card had led to the incident. The faxed ID copy could be falsified as well as the written request and the authorization letter. In this connection, could the Postmaster General inform us of the following:
- your reasons for accepting faxed authorization of ID card alone as sufficient proof of the recipient’s identity;
- the number of similar incidents which had occurred before, the complaints received, and the actual number of similar mail thefts;
- whether there is any regular review of mail holding and mail-redirecting practices;
- your recommendation for the improvement of the current mail-holding and mail-redirecting practices to strike a better balance between user-friendliness and customer privacy?
Yours sincerely,
IP LAU Suk Yee, Regina
