Recently, one of the company's delivery workers in eastern China's Shandong Province received a strange order through the company's app.
After communicating with the customer, the courier learned that the “item” the customer wanted to transport was a dead body.
The driver initially accepted the order, but when he found out what the “item” was, he refused to take it. Photo: Lalamove
He posted recordings of conversations with customers on social media.
“I took the order, but I didn't know I'd be delivering a dead body,” the delivery man told the customer, to which the customer replied, “I can pay more.”
“No matter how expensive it is, we can't transport a corpse,” the courier replied firmly.
The clearly annoyed customer said he would complain to the courier company.
On August 3, a Lalamove employee told mainland Chinese media that the company's vehicles were not qualified to transport corpses and that customers should choose professional services to transport corpses.
“If the customer continues to complain, the delivery company can file a dispute. If an investigation shows that the delivery company was not at fault, the liability will be rescinded,” a Lalamove employee said.
The incident attracted widespread attention on social media in mainland China.
“The courier should call the police. Transporting a body without following proper procedures raises doubts about the requester's motives and the origin of the body,” one online observer wrote on Weibo.
“This highlights the high cost of professional body transportation and may lead people to look for cheaper alternatives,” another person speculated.
“Some funeral parlors charge more than 10,000 yuan (US$1,400) to transport a body across provinces,” a third person said.
In China, bodies must be transported using special funeral vehicles that meet national technical standards.
Chinese law requires that corpses be transported in properly equipped vehicles. Photo: Shutterstock
They usually also have facilities for storing and refrigerating the bodies, as well as disinfection and protective equipment to prevent contamination by disease-causing bacteria that may be carried by the bodies.
Chinese law also stipulates that no organization or individual may provide corpse transportation services without official approval.
Similar cases have been reported across the country.
Last April, an order for an intercity shipment worth more than 10,000 yuan appeared on the app of a shipping company in Suzhou, eastern China's Jiangsu province.
Our client requested the use of a minivan to transport an elderly woman who had passed away.
After an investigation, the app's operators found that the order was not a genuine request and was likely made as a joke, and the account that made the order has been banned from the app.
