How do I contact Bangladesh Post Office about an EMS shipment?
Bangladesh Post Office takes EMS enquiries at the International Postal Inquiry Centre of the Directorate of Posts in Dhaka, on 02-226640499 and 02-226640500, or by email to bpoicc@gmail.com. The Foreign Post Office in Dhaka, which handles the physical exchange of international mail, answers on 02-223386828. Enquiries cost nothing. The second route into the same system is the counter that booked the item, because the acceptance receipt is the document the Inquiry Centre asks for first.
The postal headquarters is Dak Bhaban, Plot E-13/A, Agargaon, Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka 1207.
Which desk inside the Directorate of Posts owns an EMS case
Two different branch officers split postal enquiries at the Directorate of Posts, and EMS belongs to only one of them. International mail sits with the Branch Officer (IPS) on 02-58160733 and soips@bdpost.gov.bd, while domestic mail sits with the Branch Officer (Mails) on 02-58160732. An EMS item is international by definition, so a call that lands on the domestic desk gets forwarded rather than answered.
The Inquiry Centre is the public front of that arrangement. It queries the same systems the Directorate names in its published service commitment, which is why a phone enquiry and a written application end up in the same records.
"After applications relating to international mail are received from various offices and customers, a reply is provided following an enquiry made through ips.post, the Rugby System, i-care, e-mail and similar means." (Directorate of Posts, Citizen's Charter, 15 April 2026, translated from Bengali.)
ips.post is the Universal Postal Union's International Postal System, the software exchange offices use to record item events and pass them on. i-care is the UPU facility through which one postal operator formally asks another about a named item. Neither is open to the public, which is why an EMS problem has to be lodged with the post rather than solved from a tracking page.
The 6 offices that can act on an EMS item
Bangladesh Post publishes contact details for six offices with the authority to act on an EMS item, and two separate pairs of numbers for the busiest of them. Two of the six are enquiry desks; the other four are operational offices that physically hold mail at a particular stage.
| Office | Telephone | Use it for | |
|---|---|---|---|
| International Postal Inquiry Centre (Tracking and Tracing), Dhaka | 02-226640499, 02-226640500 | bpoicc@gmail.com | Any inbound or outbound EMS item; the default first call |
| International Postal Inquiry Centre, second published pair | 02-223383340, 02-223350391 | bpoicc@gmail.com | The same desk, listed on the international mail services page |
| Foreign Post Office, Dhaka | 02-223386828 | Not published | Items at the Dhaka exchange office or awaiting customs assessment |
| Branch Officer (IPS), Directorate of Posts | 02-58160733 | soips@bdpost.gov.bd | Written international mail applications and unresolved cases |
| Airport Sorting Office, Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport | 02-8901100 | Not published | Air dispatches held at the airport office |
| Dhaka GPO | 02-223358443, 02-223350748 | Not published | Items booked at, or routed through, Dhaka GPO |
| Central ICT Cell, Directorate of Posts | Not published | ictcell@bdpost.gov.bd | Tracking pages and online services that fail to load |
The two pairs of Inquiry Centre numbers appear on different official pages, the departmental contact page and the international postal services page, and both are published as current. If the first pair does not connect, dial the second before concluding the desk is unreachable.
Government offices in Bangladesh work Sunday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday as the weekly holiday, so a call placed on either of those 2 days will not be answered.
What to have ready before the first call
The Inquiry Centre works from the 13-character barcode number printed on the EMS receipt, which follows the Universal Postal Union's S10 standard: two letters, eight digits, a check digit, then the two-letter country code of the operator that issued it. An item posted in Bangladesh opens with a letter pair from the EMS range EA to EZ and closes with BD, giving the pattern EE123456785BD. Anything shorter, or anything without a two-letter suffix, is an internal reference rather than a traceable identifier.
Four further pieces of information separate an enquiry that opens from one that stalls:
- The acceptance or booking receipt issued when the item was posted, which the service commitment names as the required document.
- The addressee name and address exactly as written on the label, including the postcode.
- The date of posting, which starts the clock on the enquiry window.
- The declared contents and value from the customs declaration, which is what the Foreign Post Office matches the item against.
EMS is not sold at every counter. The Directorate lists it as available at GPOs and at first-class and second-class post offices only, unlike ordinary and registered letters, which are booked as far down as branch offices. A receipt from a sub office or a branch office therefore points to a different product and a different desk. Anyone unsure which of several numbers on a receipt is the traceable one can start with what a tracking number is and how it works.
How fast an answer comes, and the deadlines behind it
The service commitment sets an immediate response standard for international mail enquiries and charges nothing for them, while a formal grievance carries a ceiling of 30 to 60 working days. Those two figures describe different processes, and the gap between them is the reason a phone enquiry is worth exhausting before a written complaint is filed.
The outer limit is set by treaty rather than by Bangladesh Post. The Universal Postal Convention gives customers six months from posting to raise an enquiry at all, and that is the one deadline on this page that no office can extend.
"Each designated operator shall be bound to accept inquiries relating to parcels or registered or insured items posted in its own service or that of any other designated operator, provided that the inquiries are presented by customers within a period of six months from the day after that on which the item was posted. Inquiries shall be free of charge." (Universal Postal Convention, Articles 21.1 and 21.2, Universal Postal Union, text adopted at the 27th UPU Congress, Abidjan, 2021.)
| Step | Published standard | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Enquiry on an international item at the Inquiry Centre | Immediate | Free |
| Enquiry on a domestic item | Immediate, varying with the type of complaint | Free |
| Window to raise an enquiry after posting | 6 months from the day after posting | Free |
| Formal grievance through the Grievance Redress System | 30 to 60 working days | Free |
| Request under the Right to Information Act 2009 | 20 to 30 working days | 2 taka per page |
The immediate standard describes the acknowledgement, not the outcome. Tracing an item that has already left Bangladesh depends on the destination operator answering the i-care message, and that response time is outside the Directorate's control.
Sender or recipient: whom Bangladesh Post will deal with
The six-month enquiry window belongs to the sender, because Convention rules make any indemnity payable to the person who posted the item rather than to the addressee.
"If a parcel is lost, totally rifled or totally damaged, the sender shall be entitled to an indemnity of an amount set in the Regulations." (Universal Postal Convention, Article 22.3.1, Universal Postal Union, text adopted at the 27th UPU Congress, Abidjan, 2021.)
That rule splits the two common situations cleanly. An EMS item posted in Bangladesh is Bangladesh Post's responsibility, and the person who posted it is the one the Inquiry Centre will register a case for. An EMS item posted abroad and addressed into Bangladesh belongs to the foreign operator, so an addressee in Dhaka or Chattogram should ask the sender to open the enquiry at the office of posting.
Recipients are not shut out. The Inquiry Centre will answer a factual question from an addressee about where an inbound item has reached, and the Foreign Post Office will confirm whether an item has been presented for duty assessment. What an addressee cannot do is start the compensation chain, because the acceptance receipt the service commitment requires stays in the sender's hands.
Escalating past the counter through the Grievance Redress System
A case the Inquiry Centre does not settle moves to the national Grievance Redress System, which binds the Directorate to a reply within 30 to 60 working days. Complaints are filed online at grs.gov.bd or submitted on paper, and the Directorate accepts both under the Grievance Redress Management Guidelines of 2015, revised in 2018.
Two things make a grievance actionable: the complaint itself, written or electronic, and the evidence behind it. In practice that means the acceptance receipt, the tracking printout and any earlier reply from the Inquiry Centre. A grievance filed with no reference to a prior enquiry tends to be routed back to the Inquiry Centre first, which costs weeks.
Bangladesh Post also runs its own complaint management system at cms.bdpost.gov.bd, and the Directorate publishes a list of appeal officers for cases that outlast the first grievance round. The Branch Officer (Mails) on 02-58160732 is the named owner of grievance redress in the service commitment, which makes that line the right one for chasing a filed complaint rather than for opening a fresh enquiry.
Where an inbound EMS item actually sits before delivery
Inbound EMS mail passes two named facilities before it reaches a delivery office: the Airport Sorting Office at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on 02-8901100, and the Foreign Post Office in Dhaka on 02-223386828. Knowing which of the two is holding the item decides which number is worth dialling.
Items still showing arrival scans at the airport are normally awaiting transfer to the Foreign Post Office. Items showing a customs status are at the Foreign Post Office, where Bangladesh Customs assesses them. A long pause at that second stage is ordinary rather than evidence of loss, and the individual scan wordings are unpacked in what customs clearance means on tracking.
Duty and VAT are a separate question from delivery, and the amount is set by the revenue authority rather than by the post. Anyone expecting a charge on arrival can see how the calculation generally works in whether customs duty or VAT applies to an inbound parcel.
Numbers for the GPOs outside Dhaka
Three regional GPOs publish direct lines of their own, covering Chattogram on 031-627120, Khulna on 041-760677 and 041-762481, and Rajshahi on 0721-811382 and 0721-775684. They are the right call when the EMS item was booked in that city, because the acceptance record sits with the booking office rather than with the Inquiry Centre.
| Office | Telephone | Postal circle |
|---|---|---|
| Dhaka GPO | 02-223358443, 02-223350748 | Metro Circle, Dhaka |
| Chattogram GPO | 031-627120 | Eastern Circle, Chattogram |
| Khulna GPO | 041-760677, 041-762481 | Southern Circle, Khulna |
| Rajshahi GPO | 0721-811382, 0721-775684 | Northern Circle, Rajshahi |
Bangladesh Post is organised into five postal circles, each running its own site under the bdpost.gov.bd domain: Central and Metro in Dhaka, Northern in Rajshahi, Southern in Khulna and Eastern in Chattogram. A circle office sits above a GPO in the hierarchy and is worth approaching only after the GPO and the Inquiry Centre have both been tried.
What a call to Bangladesh Post will not resolve
Customs duty on an inbound EMS parcel is assessed by Bangladesh Customs at the Foreign Post Office, and none of the 6 postal offices listed above can waive or recalculate it. The post collects the charge and releases the item; it does not set the figure, and an enquiry framed as a duty dispute gets redirected.
Three other limits are worth knowing before the call. The Inquiry Centre cannot act on an item carried by a private courier, even one that uses the word express in its branding. It cannot trace an ordinary letter, which carries no barcode and no enquiry right under the Convention. It cannot compel a destination operator abroad to answer faster than that operator chooses to.
An enquiry also does not rewrite what the tracking record already shows. A stalled scan line is more often a genuine gap in the physical chain than a data fault, a distinction set out in what in transit means on a tracking page.
Domestic GEP and Speed Post enquiries go elsewhere
EMS runs to 43 countries within a weight band of 20 grams to 20 kilograms, and it is the only Bangladeshi postal product routed through the international enquiry desk. Domestic express traffic moves under GEP, the Guaranteed Express Post service, and under Speed Post, both of which are traced in the Domestic Mail Monitoring Software rather than in ips.post.
The practical consequence is the phone number. A domestic GEP or Speed Post case belongs to the Branch Officer (Mails) on 02-58160732, while an EMS case belongs to the international desk on 02-58160733. Naming the wrong service at the start of a call is the commonest reason an enquiry is logged in the wrong system and has to be reopened.
The item categories EMS accepts are listed by the Directorate as letters, parcels, business items and samples, all traceable online. Anything above 20 kilograms travels as an international air or surface parcel instead, and those enquiries take the same international route under a different service standard.
Before dialling, pull the item's full event history rather than its last line. Bangladesh Post exposes international items through the UPU Global Track and Trace portal and its own international item event page, and domestic items through a separate system. Bringing the exact date and wording of the last scan to the call is what turns a general question into a registered case, and the service detail behind those events is set out on the Bangladesh EMS tracking page.