Query re French postal system

[whataboutbob]

Not living/ thinking of living in France, but thought this board might have readers with knowledge of this. I have sent a set of keys to my cousin in France because he’ll be staying in our flat this summer while we are abroad.11 days later he still hasn’t received them. So I will send again, tracked. He really needs to get them in the next 10 days or won’t be able to get in!
Is this kind of delay normal for France/ are keys likely to be lost now?Also, is tracked to France generally reliable? Thank you.

Tracking is reliable and there is more reason for post to get lost there than there is here.

My first thought wasn’t an issue with the post office there but an issue with the address you used.

Names and addresses have to be absolutely correct and in the right format.
They must contain the name of the property owner even if it is rented by a tenant of a different name.

The times our post is delayed are nearly always due to badly written addresses. In particular our post code has a 7 in it. If you don't cross the 7 then it reads as a 1 and gets misdirected.

We have exactly the same issues as mentioned in Germany. It always seems to take forever for post to come this way whereas anything we send from Germany to England gets there in about 4 days.

You can avoid the 7 issue by typing and printing the address.

Endoftheline I've lived in France and written to people renting in France many times and never had to put the property owner's name.

I agree with others. The French postal system is generally reliable.

Not the property owner name though but certainly the name of the addressee. If you send us stuff without our name on it simply won't turn up. There's no other way to differentiate flats.

I live in France and oh my, La poste

It's about a 50% likely get anything. Especially in the city. Door codes and post boxes mean things often aren't delivered. The address has to be completely accurate (name matching the one on the post box) and if it's Paris, yeah whatever is my experience for anything bigger than an envelope. Delay seems a bit too much now, I'd work on guess that they are lost somewhere.

Courier like UPS are reliable delivery companies and I have things sent from overseas all the time, usually no problem. Make sure he is home to sign for them when they arrive (or send them to work address) because if no on
e is there to sign parcels and letters are often returned.

Yes, I fear it is lost. Bummer because it’s an expensive security key. It’s his home address, in a rural area. I’ve sent stuff there before, but now am wondering whether I got the post code wrong as I just wrote it from memory. Will re send. The problem is I don’t want to write my address on the envelope, as if someone steals it they then have my key and address.

This time I’ll print out the label as my hand writing isn’t the best!

Put a friend's address or your work address as the sender.

Good thought French fancy! That hadn’t occurred to me and I’ve posted already but I will remember that tip.

Just coming back to say that the key finally arrived 11 days after posting. In the meantime I’d sent another, tracked!

I'm glad it got there in the end.