26 June 2008

Delayed mail?

| MrsChris
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Has anyone been having issues with Australia Post recently?

I tend to send a lot of mail when it’s required of me, but recently it has been taking 10 days to get a letter to Sydney. I noticed it first start on mother’s day when my present to WA took 2 weeks. At the time I thought it was a little odd, but put it down to being a busy postal weekend. Next I sent some library books (borrowed from a Non-Canberra library in regional NSW) but they took 12 days to get there(I got a fine for late returns). Lastly, I replaced a faulty item which required mailing it to Sydney. To try to avoid delays I posted it over the counter, but to no avail – i took 12 days again. I’ve tried posting mail in several different locations, Weston, Fyshwick, even Queanbeyan, but alas my mail seems to be taking quite a while to get anywhere.
Is there a strike? Is it “public holiday month” around the rest of Australia? Has my name been marked by the postman to purposefully delay my mail? I hope this isn’t happening to everyone, but if you know something I don’t, then please inform me. Thanks.

I guess I’ll try posting my mail express next time – hopefully it will get to Sydney within a week.

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Further to my post at #14- the parcel from Perth arrived eight weeks after it was posted.

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Hi,
I have had a PO box at Duffy PO for 25 years. Up until this year, every parcel that was meant to come to me has arrived. This year three parcels posted from overseas(total value of contents about $500) have not arrived. The first was two pairs of Birkenstock shoes I bought from Germany. I enquired of the sender about them & she sent two more pairs. One pair arrived, the other didn’t. Then I bought 20 packets of machine sewing needles, which also never arrived. I submitted complaint forms to Australia post & received form letters back saying that searches for overseas posted parcels must be lodged by the sender and they could make no investigations on my behalf. The senders did that, but still no parcels & no news from Australia Post. What do I do now? Anyone else in Weston Creek having trouble with lost parcels?

We have a permanent mail direction from our street address to our PO box,lately I have had two cards in the box to go to the Weston Post Office to pick up parcels. This is hard because I work in Civic the hours that the Weston PO is open. This is the main reason we have the mail redirection to the Duffy PO which I can visit after hours.

How does one get to talk to a real person at a particular PO when they only have a general call centre telephone number, I waited in a queue for 20 mins, then got someone in NEW ZEALAND who wouldn’t give me the number of the PO anyway??

thanks
Lost Mail

I think Australia Post might be accepting lowest price tenders from people, without checking that they can actually deliver the service for that price.

Well, kinda. They offer absolutely appalling piecemeal rates to those desperate enough to take on the (horrible) work.

MrsChris, stick a photo of you wearing a 2CA T-shirt on your letters/parcels. You’ll get priority service.

Inappropriate said :

For the few years I’ve been in Canberra, I’ve noticed the mail to be pretty crappy. It always seems that mail that is sent from one side of Canberra to the other always takes days to arrive.

Must go via the GDE!

neanderthalsis4:36 pm 27 Jun 08

I was going to make a witty remark about going postal but I shall refrain.

My folks forwarded some mail sent to my house in QLD. They wrote the forwarding address on the 5 letters and posted them all on the same day. The first arrived here 3 days after the posting, the fifth 3 weeks later.

We went through a phase where all parcels delivered to our house went ‘missing’, and I had to request refunds for a number of items which I had no way of recieving. I’m fairly certain the delivery guy was taking them, becuase once the delivery guy changed it was all fine and all parcels were recieved.

The thing is that the parcel delivery must have been ‘out-sourced’, because it wasn’t coming in an Australia post van, but a red Toyota with NSW number plates, and the delivery guy never wore a uniform.

(This was in Duffy, for those who are wondering)

green_frogs_go_pop9:55 pm 26 Jun 08

We dont normally get stuff delayed..just stolen out of the po box!! GAHHH!

(Seriously. I ordered these earrings or something from ebay, got the envelope containing them, but there was a slit, where someone’s taken them out. Bastards.)

My area has a mail contractor who evidently doesn’t like his/her job. Most of us get our mail every 2nd day, so the mailperson doens’t have to stop at our mailbox. So we have our stuff rubber banded up with our box number on it. Often we miss out on the local papers because of this. It’s intensly annoying. Some residents complained and wrote letters to the local newsletter, prompting a reply from the mailperson wiht some very lame excuses, and nothing’s changed. I think Australia Post might be accepting lowest price tenders from people, without checking that they can actually deliver the service for that price.

someoneincanb8:48 pm 26 Jun 08

I love Australia Post because they so very often fail to but their ink stamp on the postage stamp so I can recycle postage. I’d say only 1 in 4 parcels I receive have had the postage stamp inked as used. I have a CD post-pack that has now made 6 postal journeys around the country with the original postage stamp still 100% intact – that’s great value as far as I am concerned. I have only noticed this phenomenon since living in ACT but it can’t be unique to here because I thought the ink stamp was put on the postage stamp at the place the parcel is lodged, rather than where it is received. As my parcels come from all over Australia, it seems to be universal sloppiness … I mean generosity. If it takes a few extra days to get there (which I haven’t noticed at all recently) I can live with it seeing as it’s almost a free service these days.

I’ve had substantial dealings with Aust Post and have found them to be fine with mail being delivered/received promptly. Only had one issue of note, an express post package of mine “came apart” during transit. They promptly called me to let me know and apologised. The missing contents were located and forwarded on. It arrived the next day.

In saying this, anything thta has a “human” involvement is going to be prone to mistakes, especially when your dealing with millions of items of mail, thats life.

fabforty said :

Last year a friend posted a book to me from the Belconnen PO as she was about to go overseas. It arrived in my Watson PO box 6 months later.

I sent an e-mail to Australia Post but they could offer no explanation.

That pretty much confirms my view that Aus Post wouldn’t have been able to explain my experience. And as I said, no harm done so no blood pressure.

In general, I’ve got to say the service is pretty good. I’ve been gob-smacked at the speed at which most stuff turns up, especially parcels. I get a fair few CDs sent to me, and I can be on the phone to a muso or a distributor one day and amazed to find it in the PO box the next morning.

Postal Industry Ombudsman. Same address/phone as the Commonwealth Ombudsman. Free. Prefers people to have a go at sorting out problems for themselves first.

Last year a friend posted a book to me from the Belconnen PO as she was about to go overseas. It arrived in my Watson PO box 6 months later.

I sent an e-mail to Australia Post but they could offer no explanation.

I’m waiting on a parcel from Perth that was posted 4 weeks ago… I was going to give up hope but this thread has actually given me some hope!

It took about 10 weeks for one (correctly stamped, addressed) letter to get from Gungahlin to me in Weston Creek. No idea what sort of scenic route it took. This is, admittedly, the stand-out example. I have noticed a few letters arriving 2-3 days later than expected, but the example above just happened to contain some slightly important legal documents…

Inappropriate5:05 pm 26 Jun 08

For the few years I’ve been in Canberra, I’ve noticed the mail to be pretty crappy. It always seems that mail that is sent from one side of Canberra to the other always takes days to arrive.

Recently a parcel we sent took two weeks to get to Bris CBD. If it’s important send it express or via courier – at least then there is a way of tracking it….

The other impact on AusPost is unaddressed mail – there is a waiting list months long to get stuff delivered that way. Companies are booking slots years in advance to make sure their brochure etc is out there at the right time. These volumes then impact on delivery times of normal mail….

I had the freakiest thing happen to me in March. I picked up my mail from my Civic Square post office box and I had about 10-12 items. Nothing too strange about that as I’d been on the road for about a week.

Until I looked at the items. They had been sent from nine months to a couple of days ago! It was like a greatest hits of my mail from July 07 to March 08. I was on the fly so it took a couple of weeks before I could go back in and ask about it. I spoke to a couple of the staff and noone really knew. I didn’t press the point and never followed up on filling in the complaint form — couldn’t see what useful outcome I’d get. No major harm done; just a couple of overdue bills I’d paid the following month when they’d come in and some receipts and other bits and pieces, plus a birthday card from the US.

Weird! My best guess was that the odd item had dyslexically gone to a similar PO box whose occupants were possibly away for an extended period.

Australia Post has been advertising for mail sorting staff for quite a while now.

The main problem is not many people want to start work at 3 or 4am.

About 3 weeks ago a leter from Melbourne took a week to reach me. Don’t take it personally.

C’mon Aussie Post, put some more staff on if that is the issue.

I had a large 7kg parcel mailed to Sydney at 3:00pm Tuesday and it was recieved less than 21 hours later. Most of the items I send are usually recieved 1-3 days depending on the recievers location.

I mail out every day and get the sender confirmation receipt sent back to me and I get it back really fast as well.

I post to all around Canberra, South Coast, Hume, Murrumbidge, Sturt and the Murray Darling Area’s – in some cases remote locations and usually takes 3 days to get the receipt back. thats one day there one day back – so I don’t have any issues.

sezzle said :

The company I work for was recieving mail, but not all of it for a couple of weeks. After numerous excuses from Australia Post, we found out that they were short staffed and had a huge pile of letters etc still to be handed out.

That helps, Thank you. 🙂

I had some photos sent to me, it took nearly a week! not bad, given they were sent from Cornweall in the UK, and as they were not urgent were sent surface mail! My daughter on the other hand is awaiting mail from the bank here in OZ and its way over due. Go figure.

The company I work for was recieving mail, but not all of it for a couple of weeks. After numerous excuses from Australia Post, we found out that they were short staffed and had a huge pile of letters etc still to be handed out.

I posted a very small parcel on Monday from Canberra to Sydney, and it got there Tuesday. So, no, I haven’t noticed anything unusual, except that maybe they are quicker then normal. Although a sample size of one isn’t very representative.

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