uanj

Man, sorry it did not work out! I was hoping UPS would find your passport and call you, the visa in it may still be valid. I had this kind of thing happen to me with America West ages ago. When my flight to SFO was delayed, all international connections were deboarded and we gave our BPs and passports to the gate agents for rebooking. I was told it was too late for any connections to Hong Kong so they would book me last. Just ahead of me a large group of Korean athletes were rebooked and handed a big bundle of passports and BPs and told to run. Which they did. I moved up to the counter to get rebooked. The agent asked for my passport and boarding passes. I said she already had collected them from everyone including me. She said there were none left, maybe by mistake she had given it to the athletes ahead of me. She went off to the gate to check and I never saw her again. You are taking this all quite well, better than I did at the time!

fumje

Sorry to learn that you were not successful.

If you ever do get your missing passport back, as far as I can figure the visa in it should be valid, on the principle that visas in expired passports are accepted when presented with a current passport.

gengar

Glad to hear UA really came through on this. Hope the Mongolian beef was good!

Very disappointing on UPS losing the package - I hate to say it, but internal thieves may target shipments from the passport service providers.

username

Thanks OP for sharing. It is good to know UA stepped out. I guess now the question is what will UPS do for OP. It seems these shipping companies are all over the place with quality and reliability nowadays...

StuckinITH

This morning I was trying to recall if China has the provision that you have to enter in the country in a certain period after you get the visa. But I think that was Brazil that had that provision and if you missed the entry within one month then your visa became invalid.

Now, it would be interesting to know if the OP had obtained a visa class that is valid 10 years. These are available for tourists and business people but not for people going to China to attend conferences. I guess we will only know if the passport ever shows up.

I'm not impressed with how A Briggs acted in this situation. They completely dropped the ball. I used them in the early 2000's for my visas for my travels to Brazil but for China I used a different company.

FlyerTalker70

Initially I thought A Briggs was some person who worked at the embassy - little did I know that's actually the name of a Travel Visa agency

It's scary to think that UPS can just lose your passport like that! Back in June of last year when I had to apply for my UK Tier 4 Visa, I elected to have my passport returned to me by UPS. Fortunately, that went smoothly and I received it in no time! Out of curiosity do embassies/consulates/Visa agencies use a special UPS service for delivering these vital travel documents?

Safe Travels,

James

stevendorechester

What a horrible situation! I' m always apply as far in advance as I can, after a co-worker just went through something like this. She applied during the holiday season and had a visa sent via one of those courier companies. It was sent out and was supposed to arrive overnight but took almost a week; it got mis-directed and due a combination of holiday volume, a Canada Post strike and weather it took a week to get to her. She still made her flight. Total failure on the part of the courier company. She couldn't even speak with customer service as the phone lines started rejecting calls and it took a week for an email to be returned. However, not all of us are in a position where we can apply far in advance so I' m not judging anybody who applies close to departure.

In this case it' s worse and was totally mis-handled by UPS. They could have done more. If I was the OP I would sue UPS for any damages caused by what was clearly their mistake. Making companies pay big time for their screw-ups will make them less likely to lose things in the future.

StuckinITH

For me, the best is if you live in a big city that has a consulate for the country that you need a visa. Like that you can go in person to do the application and then retrieve your passport with the visa. However, when like me you live in the boonies, it's easier to use those agencies as time is money. Having to drive twice to the big city would require two full days of work. And I already waste that kind of time every 5 years when I need to renew my European passport as they require to see me. For the US passports in the US, they use USPS. They don't allow the use of other courier services like FEDEX or UPS.

glbltvlr

IIRC China used to have that rule for multientry visas, but I don't think they did my last time.

Often1

OP is not the UPS customer, that is A. Briggs. So, no basis to sue UPS. Also, not sure what UPS could have done once the item went missing.

People hate using it because it is old-fashioned but in the case of valuable documents such as passports, paper stock certificates, original wills and the like, nothing beats Registered Mail. But, it has to be physically taken to a Post Office which accepts Registered Mail and the addressee (if desired) must physically pick it up at the Post Office or be physically present to accept it. In between, Registered Mail travels in locked mail sacks. This means paying an additional courier and charging higher fees which people don't want to pay.

moondog

My two biggest beefs against UPS (and Fedex, as well):
1. When many of us were ordering dollar coins ~10 years ago, they had no problem simply leaving $10,000 on my front porch, in spite of the fact that I placed a "signature required for all deliveries" notice on the door
2. Using USPS for the last mile makes sense on the surface, but tracking becomes almost impossible, and they almost always leave shipments on the porch (i.e. even when you are within 5 feet of the porch)

mahasamatman

For security, yes. For speed, no. The overhead of Registered Mail makes it slower than Priority Mail.

FlyerTalker70

I think at this point the OP would have taken the security over the extra speed! However, UPS and FedEx are reliable - many embassies use both services to ship out Visa'd passports when working with them. That being said, in a previous life, we always shipped out important legal documents on UPU Registered Mail since we'd have a receipt of delivery. In the hundreds of packets I shipped out using Registered Mail, none of them were lost and twice we received them returned (wrong address in South Korea). One thing to keep in mind is Registered Mail works even for international mail. There were numerous legal documents I had shipped to the US, Asia and Europe and had 100% tracking from end to end (including when a document was delivered to a remote city in Deutscheland).

Safe Travels,

James

Kannai

Those don't work for conferences if you say upon entering you're visiting to attend a conference... and you can't get the 10-year if you put your reason for visiting China is to attend a conference. If, however, the "purpose" of your trip is sightseeing, you're golden (so long as anyone paying for your trip doesn't care).

Steve M

Additional protections: all Registered Mail is stored in a safe when it sits overnight in a mail facility, whether it be in transit or at the final destination's post office. Also, each handoff of a Registered Mail item between personnel is documented in a written ledger, with the signatures and identities of both parties. This happens from the time it's accepted at the originating post office until it's delivered. This is an old-fashioned kind of mail tracking that's been around for a long time (since 1855 according to https://about.usps.com/publications/...pub100_076.htm). Although it may not have the instant tracking ability that more modern systems have, it has one advantage over systems like the UPS one involved in the OP's situation: if a Registered Mail item goes missing, they can start from the point of acceptance and roll forward the chain of custody using the log books through each person that touched it, and find where it went wrong. Because there's always an individual responsibility, the likelihood of an item going missing (either due to an accident, or theft) is far lower than the anonymous environment of, say, a UPS sorting facility.

Unlikely to happen for Registered Mail. Also, note that this is a completely different service than Certified Mail, which does not provide en-route tracking or accountability, but rather things like proof of delivery, restricted delivery, and so on. Certified Mail doesn't help prevent things from getting lost in transit.