Lost passport crisis ends with very happy returns!

A Galway med-tech pioneer, who lost his passport just before a vital business trip, has been reunited with it – after a search of thousands of products at Amazon in Swansea found he’d mistakenly included it in a laptop bag he’d returned.

And just to prove his luck was in, Tim Jones then bought a Lotto ticket – to win €2,000 in the following Euromillions draw!

Tim, who is originally from Swansea but has lived in Galway for many years, is the co-founder a medtech company called SymPhysis Medical, based in NUIG.

He discovered that his passport was missing when he was packing for an important business trip.

Tim was due to travel to Rome to meet doctors to get feedback on a new device that aids therapeutic treatment for late-stage breast and lung cancer patients.

After searching his home, Tim gave up hope of finding the passport and started to make alternative arrangements to replace it – with anything up to a six week wait.

This would have meant that Tim would miss key meetings in Europe – but on the off chance that he’d sent it to Amazon in his returned bag by mistake, he contacted the customer service team based in Edinburgh.

He was amazed to get a call back just five hours later from Marc to say that his passport had been found by Jonathan, who works at Amazon’s customer fulfilment centre in Swansea – minutes from Tim’s home town.

“I had already started the process of trying to get a new passport but I thought I’d call Amazon. Why not? Maybe they’d be able to help,” said Tim.

“I made the call to the customer service team and I spoke to a man named Marc. I was instantly impressed by how much he wanted to help me. I knew the chances of the passport being found were small, but Marc made me feel that if anyone was going to find it, it was going to be him.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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