Vietnam: Contracts on provision and use of postal services

According to Article 9 of the Law on Post 2010 of Vietnam and Article 3 of Circular No. 02/2012/TT-BTTTT, a contract on provision and use of postal services shall be made in writing or established by an act. The postmark or information showing the time and place of acceptance of a postal article serves as a ground for determining the responsibility of the postal service provider.

Information defining time and place of accepting postal parcels is expressed in the following forms:

- Being stamping of date;

- Being handwritten;

- Printing; 

- Sticking labels.

Postal service suppliers shall ensure the accuracy of information concerning time and places of postal parcel acceptance compared to the actual time and places of postal parcel acceptance.

Written contracts on supply and use of postal services used in the course of supplying postal services must comply with the contract form having reported to the competent state agency in charge of post.

In case a postal service supplier and sender sign other agreements relating to the contract, these agreements shall be considered as an integral part of such contract.

A contract on provision and use of a postal service in written form must have the following principal details:

- Type of postal service;

- Weight and quantity of postal articles;

- Time, place and mode of provision of the postal service;

- Quality of the postal service;

- Rights and obligations of the contracting parties;

- Postage rate and mode of payment;

- Liability and maximum compensation for a contract breach.

Contracts in written form must be made in Vietnamese. In case the contracting parties agree to use a foreign language, the Vietnamese version and the version in the foreign language of the contract are of equal legal validity.

Documents certifying the acceptance of postal parcels between postal service suppliers and senders are legally valid as written contracts signed between parties when satisfying Clauses 1 and Clause 2, Article 9 of the Law on Post 2010 of Vietnam.

A document evidencing the use of services must include at least the following content:

- The particular number and sign of the postal parcel as prescribed by the service supplier;

- Certifying sign of the service supplier;

- Time of accepting the postal parcels.

This is the content of Article 10 of the Law on Post 2010 of Vietnam and Articles 1, 2 of Circular No. 02/2012/TT-BTTTT of the Ministry of Information and Communications of Vietnam.

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