I was unable to collect the post for some time as I was out of the country for a family emergency. I only received one collection notification which I was expecting, and the letter was returned to the sender and I can pick it up from them. No problems there. But I also received two other collection notices in my mail box which I did not receive a notification for on my La Poste account, and I also hadn't put in a request to hold my mail because I didn't realize this was a possibility. So, what happened to those letters? Would they also be returned to the sender? I have no idea what they could have been and now I'm worried I missed something important! Can anyone help a concerned expat out?
There is a swarm of delivery companies active here now. Deliveries through those would not be known to/announced by La Poste.
Yes, the best way to find out will be to check back with the suppliers.
Or ask your post office. Just about everything is tracked these days. If you have the collection notices and they have a long number beginning with 99 you may even be able to track them yourself on the post.ch website.
Thanks! The difficulty is they are letters, not packages that I ordered, so I have no idea what they are.
I just tried tracking them on la poste's website, one of them "doesn't exist" any more, I suppose because it's from over a month ago. And the other says it's at the collection/delivery point as of when the collection note was placed in my mail box. No idea if it's still there, I guess I'll find out when I go to the post office.
Just a note for next time - you can put a hold on deliveries for any given period if you're going to be away, via the website. Yes, you'll need to pay for it, and it's more expensive if you leave it until the last minute, but you can just go into the specified post office when you get back and pick up all your mail, including parcels and recorded deliveries, in one go.
I realized this after being gone for a couple of weeks! Now I know for next time.
You can also opt to have everything delivered after your return if you do not want to go pick it up yourself
And you can change your mind if you give the Post enough time. We usually go pick up but on our last return knew we had to quarantine. We went online and moved the hold by one day later (that's the max we could do) and changed from pick up to delivery. The neighbors were kind enough to put the stack by our door.