It somehow take ages to receive letters in the UAE and I especially do not like to receive personal mail through my company’s post box. For instance I applied for voting by post for the election of the European parliament in June and I received the forms several weeks after the election date and was therefore not able to participate.
I registered for a post box online at emiratespost, but the credit card payment didn’t work and the registration is only valid for 2 days to go there in person and pay it cash. Because I was in Abu Dhabi the whole week I had to repeat the whole registration process before returning to Dubai. They ask for so many personal data, like education level etc. For what? I am just renting a post box! Anyway, I just filled in the required fields (still they want passport number and so on).
I arrived saturday evening 8:30 pm, just before they close. Though I brought the registration form printed out, they still asked me to fill everything AGAIN in a paper form. Then as usual a problem with the computer system… to make a long story short… it took 20 minutes to pay and get my keys. Finding the PO box took also 10 minutes, because the order & numbering does not follow a straight forward system and my box was still filled with bills and personal mail of the previous owner. I returned it to the counter as these items could contain quite some confidential information.
My lovely mom sent me a postcard for my birthday and it arrived within 5 days. That’s great and I am now awaiting my certificates from my University in Germany and hope the originals don’t get lost on the way!