Australia Post - Slow delivery

I am part of a not-for-profit national organisation with 10,000 members. We have to vote for office bearers, so ballot papers were sent with the 1st July magazine. Feedback this year regarding the delayed or non delivery of this magazine has been astounding. While we received ours a fortnight after publication, some members are still waiting a month later and the organisation has had to extend the deadline for receiving votes, now opting for postmark, rather than date received. This wasn’t an issue last year.

Some comments from our Forum:

“Australia Post have gone from bad to worse. I used to get the Mag in the first week or so of the month. Last month it had not arrived by the 23rd. I ended up getting the June copy on the 3rd of July. I have not yet received the July copy now over 3 weeks into the month.This is pathetic service. I complained to the Postmaster & the response was that everyone else was complaining too & they couldn’t do anything.”
“Maybe we should vote Australia Post out. June turned up on 1st of July, July not here yet. I use a PO box and still can’t get things on time. Order something from the US and its here in a week even through customs.”
"Still not been delivered. 3 months ago I always received it in the first 10 days of the month. "
"Australia post seems to save up magazines. I get three monthly ones and they all arrive together. I subscribe to weekly New Scientist and they usually arrive in bunches of three, every three weeks! "
… and many noting day by day “xx th of July, still no mag or papers…” and “going away next week so will not be able to vote.”

Voting closed 31 July - the organisation, inundated with members who had not received their election material, have extended the deadline to papers POSTMARKED 4 August.

It is becoming clear that a 31 day turn-around to receive something and return it is beyond Aust Post.

2 Likes

I agree. Recently some legal documents were sent from Darwin to Sydney via express envelope and it took just over 2 weeks to arrive. Not only is that ridiculous for any letter post, it is more so for the expensive express pre-paid envelopes with supposed ‘guaranteed delivery next working day’.

I suppose if your next working day is two weeks ahead they kept their word! Trouble is I works at least 5 days out of 7!

1 Like

Spoke to AP regarding slow magazine delivery - apparently all magazines are delivered within 14 days (fortnight). Small delays may occur in remote areas where, despite a daily mail delivery, the bulk mail from the sorting facility may only arrive every second day. There is no “third class” mail, all magazines are treated equally. However some special rate Charity mail can be delayed during peak times - our organisation is not a charity, but a Not for Profit. No explanation for so many slow deliveries, apart from “it shouldn’t happen”. As it is a nation wide issue the complaint was just noted. I hope the organisation lodges a strong complaint.

1 Like

Still being inundated with complaints of non delivery of the 1st July magazine by 31 July, the organisation has now released the voting form on line for members to print and return. As several members pointed out, the time to receive a letter from HQ is about 7 working days, so presumably it will take that long to reach HQ. Some members are launching a challenge to the whole voting process, saying it should be re-staged, potentially costing members another $20,000 and delaying the AGM by a couple of months. A change to voting to be on-line has gone up to the AGM. This episode has potentially lost AP the revenue from 10,000 magazine deliveries next year. AP seems intent on removing themselves from mail services.

1 Like

I have also had trouble with delays of magazine arrivals. With a weekly magazine, I have often had no delivery for two or even three weeks, and then both or all issues arrive at the same time. In general my magazines arrive several days later than the same issues delivered to people in other neigbourhoods.

Did you formalise a complaint? Noting complaints are probably handled like this.

I’ve had issues too with very slow Aust Post delivery, especially Quickflix DVDs which are supposed to be sent priority paid. In July they were taking 8-9 business days. I contacted AP via Facebook. They tried to be helpful but without a tracking number, they couldn’t do anything. They suggested I put in a complaint to the AP website which I did - again a polite reply but couldn’t do anything without a tracking number (which the DVDs don’t have). Anyway, the last two weeks they have been arriving within 4-5 days. So maybe my complaints have done something?! Anyway, I will see how it goes…

1 Like

Up to about 2 years ago I could depend on locally mailed items being delivered to me overnight, or at worst on the 2nd day. During the past weeks this has consistently and reliably blown out to being delivered on the 3rd or 4th business day after posting.

I have yet to see anyone, including the businesses and doctors I deal with whether or not time sensitive, buying the ‘special stamp’ to make delivery a bit quicker, or perhaps not quicker, since I cannot find evidence of anything except the suspicion they are directly or indirectly but purposefully delaying mail, and doing it more and ‘better’ each time they go for a price increase.

Government has made what should be a public service into a for profit business, and government expects it to be profitable with dividends deposited into their coffers. Overall it looks like AusPost as well as Australians have become the meat in an ideological sandwich, but as voters this will not be enough to affect our votes and pollies know it, so government have neither need nor inclination to change the equation.

I ponder whether the NBN will go the same way as their troubles accumulate with a similar for-profit business model whereby the RSPs have to take all the business risk and it leads to us end-users bearing the brunt of a confused and confusing communications market as the RSPs themselves have to joust with NBNCo while we can only watch.

2 Likes

We are currently waiting on a parcel that is identical to another parcel, both sent on Wednesday last week, both sent from the same company at the same time, and both ending up in the holding department of the sorting facility at Sunshine West in Victoria, where they always hold our mail for up to a week before they finally get around to sending it over the Bass Strait to Tasmania. They do this to encourage people to pay a premium price to get faster delivery times, which isn’t usually a delivery option for online purchases.

One of the parcels arrived at our address on Monday, but the other one is STILL at the holding facility on the mainland with an ETA of Friday. As stated, they were both sent on the same day from the same company and are both identical, so why didn’t we get both parcels at the same time or at least within a day of each other? Hopefully it’s not “lost” in the mail and we’ll actually, eventually, get our second parcel. Australia Post won’t look into it until the ETA has flown past, so who knows?

2 Likes

Well, our two parcels arrived a day out from each other, even though as previously stated they were identical and both sent from the same location at the same time. We now are waiting for two packages that were sent from the same location, but a day out from each other. The strange thing about these two is that the one that was sent first has been given an ETA of a day later than the one that was actually sent a day later. Which one arrives first though is anyone’s guess as both packages are in their on hold at Sunshine West Victoria stage while Australia Post deliberately makes the parcels take longer than necessary to be delivered in order to encourage people to pay extra for the priority postage. Could this make Australia Post contenders for a Shonky next year perhaps by deliberately holding onto packages for an extended amount of time in order to generate sales for the priority service?

3 Likes

Have you read about the new offer from Auspost TM called Shipster TM (Shipster program closure - Australia Post). If not, they are offering free shipping on online shopping from a number of Australian businesses. Is it too good to be true? It may be and it does come with provisos and caveats. If you want to read about it here is a link to an article:
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2017/10/10/australia-post-shipping-christmas/

The article does note some of the concerns. Further, some of the delivery areas not covered by this offer seem difficult to comprehend why they aren’t included.

EDIT: Shipster TM have updated the areas they deliver to, they offer a free 2 month trial and now offer a $10 Credit towards Aussie Farmers Direct orders that are over the $25 spend and it is only available once per calendar month.

EXTRA EDIT: Shipster TM have again updated the site within days and it is now nationwide so no longer do you need to put your postcode in to find out if you are eligible for the service. And you must sign up to their MyPost service to use the Shipster TM service.

Here is the link to the Shipster related thread on this site

3 Likes

Can I just give a big “WELL DONE” to Australia Post? It seems there’s a good reason why my monthly package from Bissett magazines didn’t arrive on Friday as expected.

If you take a look at the map below, you’ll see that the package was supposed to travel from Dandenong South in Victoria to Mornington in Tasmania, which usually takes around 3 to 4 weekdays while it has a little layover in Sunshine West, Victoria for a few days, due to Australia Post’s policy of making all mail go slower than need be in order to encourage people to pay for priority postage which isn’t an option we can choose for the subscription anyway.

So I’ve just been emailed an update on the whereabouts of the package as it’s just been scanned in at it’s current location, and they’ve gone and sent it about 7500km in the completely wrong direction!!! YOU HAD ONE JOB!!! Ha!

Still, not as bad as the time they sent a package from Northern Tasmania to my address here in Southern Tasmania via Queensland. It should have been an overnight trip and ended up taking more than a week before I saw the thing. Useless mob they are at times. You gotta laugh though.


5 Likes