Australia Post: Get your act togeather

My postal deliveries have become pathetic in the past few months, but I’m out in Palerang Shire! Mail that is correctly addrssed has been turning up at places kilometres away, and I’m pretty sure that someone saves up my mail and only puts stuff in my mailbox when there’s more than one thing. We used to get the Bungdore papers weekly, too, and now they only seem to come if other mail is to be delivered.

I don’t know what’s not being delivered, of course.

As some have suggested, perhaps all of us have had an item go astray in the mail. For me, it has been less than one a year up until Feburary this year. My name and address are the same. And yet since February this year, several important articles of mail have gone astray. These items all have one thing in common, they are bills, financial documents (including a confidential report) and bank cards. Items which can be used for identity theft. To date, all my mgazine subscriptions, personal correspondence and “useless” mail has been delivered fine. My concern is not so much that mail is going missing, but rather the type of mail that has gone missing.

JC, with regards to clause 4.2.3, that clause comes under Section 4.2 which relates to articles being redirected overseas.

4.2 reads:
4.2 Australia Post will not be obliged to redirect an article from Australia to an overseas destination and may deem an article undeliverable and may return an article to the sender :
4.2.1 unless the necessary customs documentation is affixed; or
4.2.2 if the original carriage of the article included the Domestic Registered Services or the Cash on Delivery service; or
4.2.3 if the article is a parcel or an express post article.

I take this to mean that the exclusion on express post and parcel items applies only where the redirection is to an overseas address.

Further to this, the T&C state “Australia Post may in accordance with the application made for the service, redirect articles temporarily or permanently…” The T&C define ” articles as “means letter mail and parcel post articles.”

If this is the correct interpretation, then Aus Post was wrong to not redirect that parcel which was left on my door step.

The reason that Australia Post can quote such high success percentages on their delivery standards is because the mail is tracked through an outside source, Australia Post has nothing to do with it.

For example, people are recruited to post articles to each other, all around Australia, keeping specific records of when items are sent and received, and this information is collated to reach these percentages.

The reason Aus Post quotes such high delivery success percentages is because they never care or check if a letter or parcel has gone to the right place. “I’ve dumped in in some random letterbox, another successful delivery”. I wouldn’t believe all stats quoted by the very company that wants to report and benefits from reporting postive results.

I had to hunt for a package once that Aus Post said was successfully delivered to its address. It wasn’t. Thankfully after lots of effort and cost on my part, I did find it again. I’ve had other people tell me of similar experiences they had with Australia Post. The experiences I’ve had while living overseas with their postal service doesn’t come near to the poor service here in Australia. It has gotten worse though over the years, but that may be because I’ve moved to a unit rather than a house address.

Other businesses try to use common sense when dealing with customers. Australia Post seems to lack any sense of customer needs.

And yes, I would pay more for quality service so if competition means higher cost but more sensible customer service, then I’d be happy for that to happen.

I’m with Thumper on this one. I have only had a few problems with Aust Post and the people who deliver on their motorbikes have been friendly and co-operative.

JC, as a previous employee of Australia Post, I know that parcels are excluded from redirections because of the extra costs in transport etc, if a parcel is being redirected out of a local delivery area or overseas. If for example a parcel is simply being redirected from your house to a local PO box, they will do it (no extra handling costs involved).

Posties should not have to deliver mail to your door if you do not have a letterbox. It’s an OH&S issue, not to mention a massive waste of time.

I find it hard to believe that people are whinging about postal services. Man I will just never understand the brains of the mundane (i would much rather whinge about people whinging).

Betty, check condition 4.2.3 of the mail redirection and you will see that parcels are excluded from redirection.

coelacanth – you must be so upset, you know, waiting an extra 15 minutes to come back, and then another amount of time to get your photo.

God help you if something really terrible happened – believe it or not, shit happens in life. What you’ve described is a drop in a massive ocean. Are you the type of person who would also whinge when their meal is 5 minutes late, the plane didn’t take off in time, or you had to wait at a red light for more than you felt was reasonable?? Get a life. If this is the worst thing you’ve experienced, then you’re doing just fine!

Ha…

A month ago I needed a new passport photo. So, off I went to the GPO.

I got there at 2.15. At that time, there were five people behind the desk, and one – count ’em, ONE – customer.

I asked the girl for a photo. No can do, she said, because of the Policy. The Policy says that no photos can be taken between 12 and 2.30 because it’s their busy period.

Once more for the record – ONE customer. FIVE people behind the desk.

I asked to see the manager. He backed the girl up ‘because if he did it for me, then everyone would want it, wouldn’t they?’

Anyhow, I came back like a good little customer at 2.30, and by that time there was (naturally) a hefty queue.

(The real kicker is that the whole photo taking/paying event took about a minute flat. Good Policy, guys!)

Mess, my American husband says he’s never had any problems with the USPS, so I guess it’s just a question of where you are (in both systems, I suspect). He’d prefer them to Australia Post, not least because they deliver on a Saturday and also collect your mail from you.

The US Mail system is 100 times worse than Aust Post. So i think all of you should stop complaining.

If a mailbox has been destroyed or is missing the mail man is meant to deliver it to your doorstep not dump it in the garden.

And as for somethin Betty said earlier – if you want to complain – you work thru the night sort 100’s of 1000’s of letters. It pays good money, I have a mate who does it and he aint complaining.

I’ve had problems too, over the last few years. Vital pieces of mail never arrive or are put into the wrong mail box, opened by my neighbors and sometimes eventually make their way to my (locked) mail box. Phone bills, refund cheques, job offers, proof of jury duty…

Yes, I have complained to Australia Post twice.

This is also happening to someone else who lives near by.

I have a PO box now, which is much better.

Interesting comment RubyWednesday – I wonder what’s to stop a postie, say doing half his run with two days of mail one day, and the other half with two days of mail the next?
Australia Post stacks up relatively well, though. Some countries have to spend a couple of days working out that Australia is a foreign country and that it isn’t in Europe, before a letter might get sent in the right direction.

in the last few months we’ve had a few problems with Australia Post and our PO Box. twice now we’ve been expecting registered mail. when we check with the company who sent it, they tell us it arrived sucessfully. so we asked the post office and over and over they said it wasnt there. finally we called them and they said “here it is. oh. it was delivered here 18 days ago.”
gee. thanks.

also, someone I know almost lost a job because they weren’t putting package notifications in the po box.

and there are the times we don’t get mail for weeks and weeks and weeks, and then we get a clump of it shoved haphazardly in. oh please, ignore the “do not fold” on the front.

Regarding postcodes, Holt (Kippax), Higgins and Latham all have the 2615 postcode, and all three have PO boxes available in their suburb. It’s been rare for me to get wrong mail in my PO box – perhaps once in three years. No complaints at all – fantastic service.

As for mail that comes to my home, for some reason I frequently recieve other people’s mail – my next door neighbours, people across the road, people in the next street. All are addressed correctly but seem to be dumped in my letterbox anyway. Possibly a lazy postie.

When I lived in Florey, my letterbox was nicked, and despite having paid for mail to be redirected to my PO box, the Postie just dropped the mail in the garden, where the letterbox had been. It was a few weeks before I could organise someone to install a new mailbox for me…but he continued to put the mail in the garden, rain hail or shine…

So… garden mail-dumping is common to at least two of us in Canberra!

And by the way, I’m fed up with having the useless Canberra Chronicle that I don’t want to receive, stuffed/jammed into my letterbox. Firstly it says ‘no Chronicle and no Junk Mail’ clearly on the box and secondly by the time the Chronicle is extracted from the mailbox, it’s so mangled that it only fit for the recycling anyway.

GregW, the excuses I received on that front were:
-We can’t leave the van (‘But you have to leave the van to walk up the stairs to a Queenslander, for example.’)
-Your body corporate told us not to (‘They have no right to interfere with my mail and deny saying any such thing.’)
And then the plain ‘Because’ answer.

I get annoyed when I see ads on the TV about having a lockable mailbox, which I have, and then the postman leaves the mail hanging out so anyone can steal it anyway.

I also don’t understand why they can’t deliver parcels to apartment blocks. They always leave the little slip to collect the parcel from the post office, and yet still bring the parcel with them so you can’t pick it up for hours. I had a parcel lost in the time between the slip being delivered (while I was home) and it getting back to the post office. I kept being given the runaround at the post office, and lodging a complaint achieved absolutely nothing, no compensation or explanation about this parcel (a birthday present). I once asked why they don’t deliver mail to apartment blocks and received complete crap- ‘Because they can arrive anytime between 7am and 7pm’- but every normal house gets their parcels delivered to them? And they still bring the parcels with them to lose when they have no intention of delivering them?

I also want to mention that perhaps posties and postal workers should be given literacy tests to ensure they can read and write. On so many occassions, items to my self and friends have come late or items for other people have been delivered because for some strange reason, a postal worker has crossed out the legible address and written “try. 45” or “try Barton” even when the number and/or suburb are clearly written.

Mr Evil, I like your confidence. And I have spoken to several reps of Aus Post, including the local manage twice. The local manager was good and had my mail held quicker than If I were to go through head office. He was actually helpful.

Sadly, the rest of their staff who are on the phones seem to be capable of nothing but submitting complaints to the “investigations unit”.

I would like to note however that tha vast majority of staff in local postal outlets, whether they be small licences post ofccices or major post offices have being very helpful. I think the problems are with contractors, sorting systems and management.

Danman, yes It is my responsibility to have a place for my mail to be delivered. That is why I had a diversion put on my mail at 9am on the morning after my letterbox was destroyed. I also contacted the local postal manager who put in place an immediate hold (waivering the normal three day wait) on my mail until the diversion came into effect (normally three days). Despite taking these steps, mail was still left in my garden. I contacted the postal manager who said this was in breech of regulations, and that if no box is available for mail to be put in, the mail is retained and returned to sender. Under no circumstances should it be left like that. (I might add, it was raining that day!!!)

With regards to the coffee I had delivered. It multiple small cryovac packs. The problem is that even when cryovacd, the contents is still suseptable to heat, such as when it was left in direct sunlight yesterday. When it started raining in the afternoon and someone, eager to get out of the rain, came to my dorr step, they stepped on the package. So I was left with baked, sweaty coffee beans, about a third of which was loose on the interiour of an express post satchel.

I notice a couple of people have noted the US postal service is poor. Maybe I’m lucky, but on the two occassions I had items sent from the US using economy mail from the USPS, it cam in just three days. When i’m sending stuff, it usually takes two- three weeks with Australia Post Airmail.

We are convinced mail is only being delivered every two or three days to our apartment- our mail box is down a funny lane way and we think some posties know where to find our block and others just put it in the too hard pile- it is so intermitant and parcels are always getting lost. Not happy.

we’ve had pretty much the same thing happen, we were suppose to have something sent to our post box, turn up in the carport, at our house!

And we’ve had stuff stolen out of letters, which was why we got a post box in the first place. Then, after that, we had something stolen out of another letter in the actual post box!

Good to know its not just me, who’s had to put up with their shenanigans..

Very true GnT. Australia Post only carry the mail so far, we then have to rely on the postal service in the other country. The USA is notoriously awful.

My sister lives in Hong Kong and posted a parcel to me on a Friday, it was in my po box on the Monday!

My folks sent me a postcard from Vanuatu that arrived 3 1/2 weeks later. They’d been home for two weeks when I finally received it!

Not saying this excuses any poor service by Australia Post where we do and should have higher standards. Just saying sometimes we have to be a little bit grateful for what we have …

Emd, that’s interesting about you using TNT, as my work ditched TNT because they were useless. A lot of mail went missing and service was very poor at times.

I send a lot of small parcels as part of a business. Every single one that was sent in April via prepaid satchels failed to arrive at its destination. I’ve also sent a letter (with postcode in the postcode squares) that was delivered back to my own mailbox – they delivered it to the Sender’s address instead of the To address! And I often come home to find parcels on my doorstep instead of a card in the letterbox – frustrating, given the high crime rate on my street.

I’ve given up on Australia Post and got a contract with TNT couriers. Quicker, reliable, always leave a card for redelivery if you’re not home, and not much more expensive. I’m trying to do business via email or phone instead of letters via Australia Post too.

There is plenty of competition for parcels. Because there is no competition for letters, the government strictly regulates the delivery standards (which are monitered through an outside agency, like ‘secret shoppers’) and Australia Post meets or exceeds the standard of 96% of mail Australia wide being delivered on time or early.

The fact that there is no competition also means that Australia Post has to remain affordable for all Australians. I’d like to know how much it would actually cost to get a letter from Canberra to Perth (not 50c I’m sure) with a company that did not have the same logistical network.

Ozhair, at least they make an attempt. I ran a continuing battle with Australia Post as to why units receive an inferior standard of service in that we always get those bloody cards to go down to the post office and collect (thankfully here in Canberra, the hours are a little more flexible than the 9-5 weekdays at my old post office!). Every time I explained why their reason was bullsh*t, I got an alternative explanation, and on it went.

That said, I have a sneaking suspicion the postie didn’t come at all yesterday as none of the units (40+) appeared to have any mail.

I’m actually more surprised people are saying how good Australia Posts service is

I can only judge them on my personal experiences – not some one elses – hence my stance.

Need I say the obvious. When you have no competition, there’s no incentive to deliver a quality service. Usually I’m not a keen market capitalist but here I’m all for it.

Trust me, there would be no confusion with my name or what was written on the envelope or the address. And posties make those decisions all the time, which is why people’s mail DOES get lost in who knows where in Canberra. Or on the positive side, that’s why letters sometimes DO get through even though the address or postcode may sometimes not be quite right. But I think plain logic should suffice in the ones I experienced (as in ‘unusual name of this letter matches with unusual name of all the other letters, except there is one number missing on address’). There is no consistency, no logic or sense to anything I have experienced with the posties.

And notifying them does no good. Their investigation process is as lame as their service at times. I’ve given up.

Parcel contractors do have a list of redirections that match up with the posties (I know because I have a redirection going). Though the parcels are handled separately, they are sorted down to the street level by the contractors themselves in the local area. This is a case of the contractor not paying attention, let the post office know.

Letters without a unit number usually cannot be delivered, and conversely, must be delivered as addressed. I don’t think posties are allowed to make decisions about the destination of a letter, it is up to the sender to provide the correct information. Imagine if there was another ‘B. Smith’ living in your units and he received your medicare card? First step in identity fraud….?

The problem with the parcel is it is not a letter and does not get processed by the local mail sorting centre so can hardly get redirected. If you check your conditions you will find that only mail that would be delivered by the local postie on his normal run get redirected. The redirection stickers get put on at the regional mail sorting centre, so if the parcel doesn’t go there it can hardly be redirected.

I’m actually more surprised people are saying how good Australia Posts service is. Not a week goes by without some sort of mind boggling delivery happening by Australia Post to either my address or my fiancee’s. I wish I could have kept a running tally of their poor service, but I’ve given up asking them to do a decent job.

Anyway, roughly here’s a small list of their poor performance:

More than 50% of the time when I paid for Express Post (guaranteed overnight delivery), delivery was days after it should have arrived. On one occassion a card sent through regular post sent on the same day as an express post package arrived earlier then the express post package. This was to the same address.

The two times I asked them to investigate their late delivery, they took months to get back. On one occasion they for some reason contacted the recipient rather than me (the person who lodged the complaint) and told them the package was received so everything was okay, case closed. This was without telling me.

I posted a letter, addressed to Portugal, sent with postmark on the stamp back to me because the lamo-heads there didn’t turn the letter over and thought the return address was the postal address (That was a puzzler). I had to argue for them to send it to Portugal where it was addressed but for a while they refused because the letter was already post stamped even though the stamp cost amounted to an international post.

I had posties not deliver mail to my letterbox because my unit number wasn’t on the letter, even though I had other mail addressed to me under my name sent to me on the same day to that unit (I had to find out through Medicare Australia that’s what happened…Australia Post gave zero details as always).

I could really go on and on…packages badly damaged, sent to wrong addresses, lost mail galore. Any business needs to have a high standard of success to run successfully. So also saying ‘well, they get it right once in a while’ is not good enough especially when we are talking about a major form of communication.

I have to give Australia Post a big plus for service to our street. We’ve even have letters with only our surnames and suburb on the address being delivered to the correct mail box. I think this is due to dedicated posties that take pride in their work. I agree with Mr Evil. If you do have a problem then talk to to you local Postal Manager. You can even talk to your localpostie if you catch him or heron their rounds. Their very helpful and do try and solve any postal problems. And no I don’t have any thing to to do with Australia Post. I just think they provide a very good service.

Maybe you should contact the Canberra Mail Centre and ask to go on a tour of the facility. This would give you a great indication of the sheer volume of mail that Australia Post handles everyday, even in Canberra (if my memory serves correctly, I think it was in the region of 1,000,000 articles a day in Canberra and around 20,000,000 Australia wide?)

As for the coffee (that should have been correctly packaged like danman pointed out), you need to tell the local post office or your delivery centre and lodge a complaint about the contractor, otherwise no-one can take any action.

Tim, maybe you should volunteer to do a shift sorting mail, starting at about 5.30am and having a couple of hours (as per Australia Post delivery standards) to sort thousands of letters into tightly packed po boxes. Laziness or poor quality control is not the issue, it is called HUMAN ERROR or a MISTAKE, two things which apparently you are not familiar with, as I’m sure you never make mistakes…

It wasn’t the coffee that’s extracted from the poo of Indonesian civet cats, was it? Most expensive coffee in the world, that shit.

I was sent an invite from someone in watson to my place in Belco. He didn’t put a postcode on it, so it was directed via the UK. Logical really. And some entertaining postmarks and corrections on the envelope.

Have you actually spoken to anyone from Aust Post about this problem?

I think that if you spoke to the local Postal Manager you might be able to resolve these issues.

There may be some help at hand. Then again, maybe not:
http://www.pio.gov.au/index.html

My main problem with Aus Post over the past twelve months has been with the muppets they’re hiring as contractors to deliver parcels. I buy a lot of stuff on Ebay, and several times now I’ve been waiting on a parcel, way past when it should have arrived. Eventually I’ve contacted the local PO to find that the parcel is there waiting to be collected. The idiot tasked with the delivery hadn’t even left a card saying the parcel was there. Once or twice, an honest mistake, but five times in less than twelve months and I’m getting annoyed.

This week our civic work PO box ended up with mail for a whole host of random people with different boxes to us. We dutifully returned it to the post office for redelivery though the recipients would be waiting another 24 hours for their mail.

deejay: Holt (2615) doesn’t share a postcode with Belconnen (2617 or 2616 for PO boxes), and Flynn doesn’t have a post office, so I suspect it’s more a case of “who would have thought writing the wrong postcode on something might make it arrive in the wrong place?” Well me, for one…

I’ve generally had no problem with Australia Post – *except* for when I find a letter for PO box 3242 (or another close number) in my box 3243. It happens probably once every two months, and it just shows either laziness or a lack of effective quality control procedures.

Each time I find the letter I take it inside and tell them. I sure hope that when my letters go into another box, the owner of that does the same.

@deejay, post office box numbers in the same post code range generally have a different prefix to differentiate them. For example, the whole of Weston Creek is p/c 2611 and it has two post offices. Boxes at Weston PO start with 3, and boxes at Rivett start with 8.

As for your coffee – it should read the contents are ruined not the contents is ruined.

If they were ruined from rain and sun while under your doormat – then they probably were not packaged correctly in the first place.

Its my understanding that most whole coffee beans packaged for sale are cryovac packed – ie – watertight reflective vaccum pack to keep moisture out and reflect radiated heat. If they were not cryovac packed I would be asking for a refund from the retailer/wholesaler and maybe tick teh registered post box next time.

As for why there were not delivered to your PO box is beyond me – but when i get packages that are too big for my letter box I Always get a slip to take down the road and pick up from the GPO.

Not saying I am rigth and you are wrong – just adding a little balance to the argument.

I sent 50 DVD wedding invitations on Monday to both VIC and ACT.

I started receiving RSVP’s yesterday – so it was an overnight delivery (regular – not express post) – which is not unusual – but I still think that this is a demonstration of good service.

People only like to note the one scant few times an organisation gets things wrong – and fails to give credit for the years of flawless service.

Sure putting your letters in the garden was wrong of the postie – but under the terms and conditions of use of Australia Post you have a responsibility to have a place for delivery of postage items.

Section 24.1.3 and Appendix 2 of the Australia Post Terms an Conditions of Use would be a good place to start if you need to know more.

Failing that – if my letter box was blown up I would at least organise a rudimentary letter box/place to receive incoming post for the interim period between letter boxes

Having moved from Sydney six months ago, I am personally finding the service better here than there (which is not hard – Strawberry Hills business centre is atrocious). However, I have a PO Box in Holt, which shares a postcode with Belconnen, Kippax, Flynn, etc. So of course yesterday I received something for the same box number in Belconnen. I am only surprised it took this long for it to happen. Who thought sharing postcodes over multiple post offices was a good idea? Isn’t the point of postcodes to differentiate between post offices?