A few years ago a friend was traveling in Tibet and had an emergency where I had to wire her money from Beijing to Lhasa. It was a pain to go through China Post, which has pretty good domestic money transfer means, and at the time China's banks were fractured so getting money from Bank of China in Beijing to Bank of China in Lhasa was not possible in less than a week.

So, I used Western Union. From Beijing I had to call their overseas office, which could get the money to Lhasa immediately. But when I was on the phone and said Tibet, the woman said, "I don't see that country on my computer."

I then told her, "No, China has Tibet now and Tibet is a province in China."

She then said she couldn't find it. So I told her to look for "Xizang", the Chinese name for Tibet. Still couldn't find it. Frustrated, I hung up, and found an alternative way to get money in a couple days to Lhasa. I never did find out what Western Union's issue was.

Today a similar thing happened. A friend just told me she called FedEx in the USA to have a package delivered from New York to Hong Kong. FedEx askedfor the postal code in Hong Kong of the destination, and my friend said that there was no postal code and Hong Kong had no postal codes. Fedex then said they could not send the package if there was no postal code and my friend should find it and call back later. Frustrated, my friend hung up and just called me for confirmation on whether she could get a postal code for Hong Kong.

My question: wouldn't FedEx have this information in their system to show that Hong Kong addresses often do not have postal codes? The FedEx office in China definitely knows that there are no postal codes in Hong Kong, so why doesn't their USA office have this tidbit of information?

A few years ago a friend was traveling in Tibet and had an emergency where I had to wire her money from Beijing to Lhasa. It was a pain to go through China Post, which has pretty good domestic money transfer means, and at the time China's banks were fractured so getting money from Bank of China in Beijing to Bank of China in Lhasa was not possible in less than a week.

So, I used Western Union. From Beijing I had to call their overseas office, which could get the money to Lhasa immediately. But when I was on the phone and said Tibet, the woman said, "I don't see that country on my computer."

I then told her, "No, China has Tibet now and Tibet is a province in China."

She then said she couldn't find it. So I told her to look for "Xizang", the Chinese name for Tibet. Still couldn't find it. Frustrated, I hung up, and found an alternative way to get money in a couple days to Lhasa. I never did find out what Western Union's issue was.

Today a similar thing happened. A friend just told me she called FedEx in the USA to have a package delivered from New York to Hong Kong. FedEx askedfor the postal code in Hong Kong of the destination, and my friend said that there was no postal code and Hong Kong had no postal codes. Fedex then said they could not send the package if there was no postal code and my friend should find it and call back later. Frustrated, my friend hung up and just called me for confirmation on whether she could get a postal code for Hong Kong.

My question: wouldn't FedEx have this information in their system to show that Hong Kong addresses often do not have postal codes? The FedEx office in China definitely knows that there are no postal codes in Hong Kong, so why doesn't their USA office have this tidbit of information?