I recently had to send some signed documents to a bank for a new mortgage. It was tracked and it’s tracking looked like a Cook’s Tour. It was addressed to a locked bag in Kew but ended up in Collingwood where it languished for 10 days before the bank found it. I have lodged a case and Auspost now are processing my case. So far they have not been able to tell me any more than I found out from the tracking information. Sending me emails telling me what I already know.
My questions are:
Would it have gotten there faster if it was not sent Express?
What is the point of Express mail?
Who ordered the re-direction? No one has been able to answer this so far.
Can we have any confidence at all in Auspost’s Express Delivery Service?
Has anyone else out there had a similar experience?
What is the point of executives giving themselves Cartier watches when the service is so abysmal?
One can never answer excepting if one peruses shipping options Auspost ‘express’ seems to be much more costly for 1-2 days quoted quicker delivery - if it doesn’t go astray.
It allows Auspost to promote and charge for a premium service to compete with other courier services as well as to help their bottom line P/L.
Auspost, in my experience, does the least possible to provide any form of tracking service. My personal gold standard was an experience with Fedex in the USA circa 1988-ish. We regularly sent boxes of various levels of importance and one day received a notice that there was a fire on the Fedex airplane and everything was destroyed, and they put a full credit for the declared amount on our account. It took us a few days to identify what got burnt but the credit note alerted us to go through our records.
In contrast we enjoy stories in these old topics.
and
While the prominence of debate has subsided, as well as their previous CEO gifting executives watches, it remains possible if not probable government (of all persuasions) overtly or secretly would prefer to retire Aupost into fully private hands and then point fingers at the irregular service.
All that being written I have had no issues with delivery in recent years although 2 international airmail envelopes have gone missing, one incoming and one outgoing. It is impossible to ever know if either could be ‘credited’ to Auspost or the USPS.
It originally was to provide next day delivery service, but this ‘guarantee’ has been mostly suspended:
It is possible that it might have got to the recipient at the same time, but if you sent it by standard mail there would not have been tracking facilities to see where your post was.
I would be asking Australia Post for a postage refund as they haven’t upheld a good level of service to you.
Years since I’ve used snail mail but a few days ago I sent a letter by Express post. The customer service person said that speed of delivery would very much depend on the postcode it was sent to.
The tracking journey was interesting:
Received Middle Park 12:31 pm (22 Aug)
Processed Melbourne airport 9:40 pm
Next facility Port Melbourne 10:25 pm
Delivered Melbourne GPO Box 6:26 am (23 aug)
Considering that the Melbourne CBD is only about 5km from Middle Park
it was a bit of a tortuous journey:
Middle Park to Melbourne airport: 28 Km
Airport to Port Melbourne 30 Km
P.Melb to delivery at Melbourne GPO 5 Km
For me to have it delivered the following day and being able to track it made the $8.85 worth paying for, but maybe I was just very lucky ?
Thanks all for giving me all your experiences. It seems I was naive thinking I could reply on the Express in the postage. I’m still going to follow this up with the bank as Auspost seem to say there was a redirection in place but the bank personnel didnt know about it
I remember once, I sent 2 boxes from 3875 to 3083 (country to Melb. suburb). One box arrived the next day and the 2nd box the following day. They were not express but ordinary mail. I think date of delivery depends on Aust. Post work volume and staffing levels (eg some staff on sick leave). I always make sure the address is in large letters/numbers, it seems to help.
I’ve used the Express Post envelopes a number of times in the past 3 years to send urgent documents to Sydney from NSW Mid North Coast area.
It’s s’posed to be “next day” or 2 days delivery service, and that’s what you are paying premium rates for.
In every single case, the documents took between 4 - 7 working days to arrive at their destination.
I found myself wondering if perhaps it would have been faster to have sent them via ordinary mail, and pocketed the savings on the extra postage?
Using the Aust Post app to track the delivery, there was a disclaimer, saying that “due to Covid restrictions, delivery may be slower than expected” .
Fine, but why are they charging a premium price for a service they know they are unable to fulfil?
Now as to the Aust Post tracking app, sometimes this app works quite well and you can follow the progress of your item all the way through from beginning to end.
“sometimes”…
At other times I’ve found the app merely fuels your frustration by revealing that your parcel has fallen into a hole somewhere, or it is going around and around in circles from one place to another but never actually getting to it’s destination.
Also of concern is that sometimes the app declares “your parcel has been delivered” but this is actually a half truth.
This could mean it’s been delivered to a PO Box, a Locked Bag, or a local post office awaiting collection, BUT the point is the parcel has not actually yet been delivered to the end recipient. This has happened to me a number of times, particularly with Amazon parcels, and Amazon picks this up as meaning “the parcel has been delivered to me” when in fact it is actually at my PO Box or local post office awaiting my collection.
This creates a potential problem, if somehow the parcel goes astray before I collect it, and Amazon records show that “it has already been delivered to me”.
Aust Post is running a series of TV commercials which are really damage control, attempting to convince us that Aust Post is on top of their game, when the reality is somewhat different.
Interesting and revealing email . Maybe Choice should do an investigation into this. As you say, people are paying a premium for this.
I will be more circumspect about using Express in the future
They don’t tell you this at the PostShop when they charge you $10.50 for Express Post and there is no notice of this on the Yellow (Express Post) post boxes.
I found out as my documents went from Burwood (Sydney) to Melbourne Airport Centre, then on to Adelaide Airport Sorting Centre, from there it went to Perth and Broome and then via Perth and Melbourne to Sydney GPO as addressed. The total time was over 5 weeks.
Australia Post refused to refund the Express Post cost, so I lodged a complaint with the Commonwealth Ombudsman and they refunded it pretty quick after that!
