Thailand Post is into stamps, not movies

NAWAPOL “TER” Thamrongrattanarit, director of the award-winning film “Mary Is Happy, Marry Is Happy”, is not happy at all at the moment.
The social media bore the extent of his wrath this week after the symbol of the most successful moment in his filmmaking career ended up in pieces. Blamed for the breakage is Thailand Post, which managed to deliver a trophy to Ter in more segments than it had when it began its journey in Germany.
Ter recently won the New Talent Award for “Mary Is Happy” at the Hamburg International Film Festival. He couldn’t attend the event, so the organiser shipped the trophy to him. “I had bad feeling when I learned that they’d be sending it via DHL and Thai Post,” he shared on Facebook and Twitter. I immediately thought, ‘Will it survive?’”
Ter and several million other people seem to think that Thai Post can sometimes get a little clumsy when handling delicate mail. Apparently almost everyone has a “damaged goods” story. It makes for several months’ worth of wearying reading on the social networks.
Ter, of course, has a lot more followers online than the average Joe, so the Horror from Hamburg has garnered a large share of the public’s attention, especially when accompanied by photos of the busted artefact in question.
“I can barely describe the condition of the package when it arrived,” a devastated Ter declared. “Well, let me put it this way – it’s like someone dropped the box from an aircraft and delivered it through my roof.”
And that was just the wrapping. His worst fears proved true when he opened it and found the trophy broken, despite being mostly solid rock. It wasn’t so solid after all.
Taking solace in his sense of humour, the director suggested that Thailand Post would have been very helpful when the Germans were hammering the Berlin Wall to bits.
Tragedy followed by chuckles earned Ter’s post 4,800 retweets and 7,200 likes and 850 shares on Facebook. That can’t all be ascribed to his personal popularity, though, or that of his movie. Clearly the news struck a chord with many other victims of Thailand Post maltreatment. Similar tales flowed in about broken, missing and spoiled contents of all kinds.
Surely there had to be a swift response this time from the agency, and sure enough, Thailand Post – which naturally has its own Facebook page – soon delivered a personal message to Ter, saying it would be in touch about undertaking an investigation.
“The package would have been handled either by Thailand Post or DHL locally,” it said, hoping someone else might get to share the blame, “but if it was our responsibility, we will compensate for the damage.”
If indeed Thai Post has to take responsibility, it will be interesting to see how (and how soon) it compensates Ter. There’s no specific value attached to the trophy, but obviously any filmmaker would consider it a treasure, maybe even priceless.
In the meantime his fans on Facebook have helpfully suggested he repair the award with Superglue. Repairing his opinion of Thai Post might need something much stronger.