Hull couple forced to give up life in Spain after passports end up in New York

[TrueBlueTerrier]

http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/hull-cou ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

A west Hull couple were forced to give up their lives in Spain after their passports were sent more than 3,000 miles away to strangers in New York by mistake.

Keith Kerslake and his wife Louise say they now feel "sceptical" about using the Royal Mail after their passports ended up in the States, arriving there by post.

They applied for their passports in May so they could carry on working but they only found out the important documents had been sent over the Atlantic last week.

But by that time they had already had to leave their jobs and the country they had lived in for nine years because they were unable to work without their passports.

A shocked Mr Kerslake, 53, said: "We just couldn't believe that our identifications had been sent to a stranger on the other side of the world."

The couple were living in the Fuengirola area of Spain and working in Gibraltar when they applied to renew their passports so they could carry on with their jobs in security and a law firm.

The new passports were sent by the passport office to Mr Kerslake's father in Bransholme, who then sent them via a Royal Mail tracker service to Spain, but they somehow ended up on the east coast of America.

Mr Kerslake, who says he could no longer work in his security job because the passport did not arrive, said: "We had to move back to the UK because we couldn't work in Spain without our passports.

"We waited and waited after my dad told us he had sent the passports onto us, but they never arrived. We had to wait more than a month for a new pair to be issued, but by then, we were scraping by with bar jobs."

The couple say they contacted the Royal Mail complaints department "more than a dozen times", and were told the passports were still at Heathrow, and then later were told they had arrived in Madrid.

Eventually, Mr Kerslake claims Royal Mail told him the passports had been lost in transit, and he was offered £40 towards the cost of new ones.

He said: "We came back to the UK to find work and it wasn't until last week we found out the first set of passports had actually gone to someone in New York."

Then, just last week, Mr Kerslake and his wife found a Facebook message from May, 4, 2015, in their "other" folder, which they had not been notified of and so they had not seen it.


The message was from a man in New York, who told them their passports had been sent to them and that he had handed them in to the UK Consulate in New York.

"The passports are now void but that is beside the point," said Mr Kerslake.

"They were in New York for more than a month as usable identification. We are so sceptical about using Royal Mail."

Royal Mail has since apologised to the couple but still does not know how the passports ended up in New York.

A spokesman said: "Every item we handle is important to us and we always strive to provide the best possible service to all of our customers.

"Unfortunately, without seeing how the item was addressed and the time elapsed since this incident took place it is difficult to ascertain the reason why this item was incorrectly delivered.

"We will be contacting the customer to make compensation arrangements as a gesture of goodwill."