Australia post Tracking 'Service' What a con

[shorty2012]

I had a similarly disappointing experience with Australia posts tracking service. I sent a parcel from Bendigo to Chiltern. It took more than a month to get there but the system was saying that it had been delivered after one week.

I have also just received a parcel from America. Their tracking service showed that it took 7 days to get to Melbourne. It took another 7 days to get from Melbourne to Axedale. They could have very easily walked here with it in that time. This is the second delivery I've had from that supplier and the delivery time was very similar.

The government is obviously running the service down so people will opt to use private delivery companies. Then they will use that as justification for selling off Australia Post at a hugely devalued price.

[newcole99]

Jan, the original poster here. Yesterday I got this email from Australia Post. They have CLOSED MY CASE without delivering my parcel to the address or providing me with the tracking I paid for. I paid nearly $200 to send this parcel and they can't or won't deliver it. This is appalling. I'm VERY angry about this.

Australia Post

Reference 09361468
Update for Investigation - 09361468
Dear Jan,

Thank you for your response. I can understand how frustrating it can be waiting on the delivery of your article.

As mentioned in the previous email, your item is being held by customs. If further information is required, please contact Tel: 0900-0990 or 0900-0570.

_As this item is held by customs for collection by the addressee, I will close this investigation. _

I hope this information has been of assistance.
_ _
Regards,
Robyn Nicholls
Australia Post
ref:00D301GGce.500901X2L1C:ref
_ _
_ _
This email was sent by Australia Post. Australia Post does not represent, warrant or guarantee that the integrity of this email communication has been maintained nor that the communication is free of errors, viruses or interference.

[newcole99]

Jan, the original poster here. AND the Australia Post phone number they supplied in the 'we can't be bothered to deliver your parcel, it is out of hands' email doesn't work. Right. Yeah.

[newcole99]

And the addressee has not been notified of the whereabouts of the parcel. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

[newcole99]

Hullo, Jan the original poster, yet again. Yesterday's missive from Australia Post. UNBELIEVABLE. I have replied, asking what did I pay for if not DELIVERY of my parcel and what did the money I paid for 'TRACKING; actually buy??

According to this email my parcel apparently is sitting at the Netherlands Customs. The addressee and the person who lives at the address have not been informed that there is duty to be paid. I have not been informed? I am appalled. So my parcel is in some kind of Kafka-ish limbo and Australia Post has seemingly washed its hands of the whole matter. $200 down the drain. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Update for Investigation - 09361468
Hi Jan,

Thank you for your reply and shedding more light on the situation, it is greatly appreciated.

I understand that this experience has been frustrating for you, from the item taking double the amount of time to be scanned into the Netherlands to the item now being held in Customs and your friend leaving for Mali.

Unfortunately as stated, the item is being held by Customs in the Netherlands. Customs is out of any postal authorities control as it is government run. The only thing we could try is asking the Netherlands if they will request the item be returned back to you as the addressee is no longer in the country. The only way the item will be delivered is if Customs duties are paid by your friends father in law. Please let us know if you would like the item to be returned back to you and please note this is not a guarantee due to Customs having their own rules and regulations.

Again, please accept my apologises for the obvious frustration and disappointment that this situation has caused you. Please let us know if you would like us to at least request the item to be returned. Looking forward to your reply.
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[BrendanMays]

Hi @newcole99, how frustrating, and your comment about the parcel being in limbo seems particularly apt. Hopefully you've been able to sort this part out? If not you could try contacting Dutch Customs. As for the tracking situation, vendors are required to provide a service with 'due care and skill'. However, there may be some terms and conditions that limit liability for events out of Australia Post's control (as others have indicated), and it might take an investigation to determine where the fault lies and how this all fits into the law. The fact that a foreign customs department is involve unfortunately only complicates matters.

At the end of the day, you've paid for tracking and it hasn't worked, and from the comments here we can see that your are not alone. If you want a refund for this portion of the cost, you could always try a complaint with your state's trading body Hopefully this thread will help others decide if paying for parcel tracking is worthwhile, and we'll continue watching this issue. I'd encourage others with experience with parcel tracking (good or bad) to keep posting here.

[Khary]

Ive had parcels to be signed for thrown over my balcony without being signed for, i have had one driver caught on camera opening my front door and letting himself into the hallway to leave my parcel there, subsequently leaving the door not only unlocked but unlatched - with a blind cat in the house. I have spent weeks of frustration holding off picking up a parcel at the post office as i was expecting others that i was then chasing as i had no word - only to find Aus Post noticed i had a few and kindly kept them all there for me, without letting ME know ! lol

The local post office staff seem to have taken the go slow LITERALLY not just for mail.

[petermac]

Why not just explain it? Less time and trouble than beating around the bush! WADH.

[TheBBG]

Why not just explain it?

a) It is standard internet for yonks
b) some people might be offended with it written out
c) some forum software filters anything deemed profane or obscene
d) google is your friend (as long as you are not overly concerned with privacy issues)

[teddlesruss]

UPDATE: The WORST one yet!

I didn't think anything could out-do the last experience above but I must say Australia Post have dug deep, they've dug to the deepest level of incompetence ever.

I ordered something on 11th December 2016, and waited for it. It had a Chinese tracking number as a matter of course, so I was able to see that it was shipped on the 12th, and arrived in Australia Post's care by the 14th. Nothing seen in 2016, nor January, nor February, and halfway through March I bit the bullet, asked the company for a refund (and received it, bonus points to them!) and re-ordered the items at higher cost (they'd been on special) in early April. On the 12th April (!!!!) my original items arrived, so I cancelled my second order and repaid the original invoice.

It's a record for Australia Post and myself - they took seventeen WEEKS to deliver an item from Sydney to a well-serviced town in Victoria.

Best bit: Their site recognised the Chinese tracking number but claimed never to have scanned it at all, and there was also an Australia Post tracking number label attached to the package just to give lie to that claim to never have scanned the Chinese number - and their own tracking number wasn't in their tracking system at all... And as far as staff could tell me, that tracking number had never actually been issued or scanned either, but the sender's copy of the label had been removed meaning someone had a record of it on some clipboard somewhere

I have to say that almost 120 days to cover 1000km is one of the slowest services I've ever experienced. This is the most incompetent pack of postal service incompetents I've ever dealt with, and I've dealt with the postal services of Pacific islands back in the 70's when nothing worked properly out there. Australia Post have established a new tide mark around the gurgler of incompetent performances...

[TheBBG]

Yours is not the first. They seem good at that! Ref my months old post.

Australia post Tracking 'Service' What a con

[newcole99]

Hullo Brendan, My parcel was finally delivered about a month ago to my friend's father-in-law, in Holland, for a fee. Wow. I still think the basic issue here,is that I paid for for tracking and I expected tracking - from when the parcel left the post office to when it reached its addressee. I thought the idea of tracking was that it actually tracked a parcel throughout its whole journey. The tracking I got stopped promptly at the back door of the post office where the parcel was posted. I think this is fraud.
Unacceptable. I would appreciate Choice taking this issue up. Regards
Jan Newby

[BrendanMays]

Thanks for the update @newcole99. Glad it hear it got sorted, and a shame it was so much hassle. I'll be sure to pass on your request.

[draughtrider]

Like @TheBBG I've experienced amazing tracking from USPS - whether it actually reflects reality we will never know, but it seems much better than what Australia Post expose to the end user.

Like @newcole99 suggested, and I have suspected for some time, what the end user sees when paying for parcel tracking is probably not the actual level of detail recorded - after all, if you told the customer everything you can't wriggle out of it.

Some years back I posted an article from Sale to Alice Springs - the tracking showed two things - firstly the detail of everywhere it went and secondly that Australia Post don't have any geography questions in their aptitude test. The parcel went Sale -> Sydney -> Melbourne -> Adelaide -> Darwin -> Alice Springs. Given the size and nature of the parcel it would have been road freight ... and took literally weeks.

Recently I've paid for tracking on a number of items. 'Mysteriously' these items register as "We've got it" against the originating post office and only progress to "It's on its way" when they hit the destination post office - I've seen usually 2 or 3 scan's at the destination post office before it gets "It's coming today" status. Everything in between is a mystery. Occasionally I see one extra hop somwhere, usually adjacent to the receiver/sender, maybe if it is an agency or similar? I'm sure it is possible that parcels are consolidated for bulk deliver, however given the source/destination combinations I've seen that is hard to imagine. My belief is that at some point Australia Post chose to obscure the detail of internal transit, probably because they were embarrassed about their lack of geography knowledge...

[Trajis]

Currently experiencing the same problem as many others. USPS tracking shows my parcel apparently arrived in Sydney 2 weeks ago from Miami (despite the hurricane hitting Florida just after it had been mailed), and then zilch since.
What's strange is that this didn't use to happen with USPS before the last 12 months or so - parcels used to arrive 2 or 3 days after landing in Australia - so something has changed in the tracking procedure once items arrive in Australia, and I've received untracked parcels from the US in as little as 2 weeks door-to-door. Also, this hasn't happened with tracked parcels from the UK, France, China or Japan, so i don't buy the "it's sitting in customs" excuse.
Last time this happened to me with a US parcel (yes, it's not the first time), I rang Auspost and the guy claimed it wasn't necessarily Auspost who would deliver the parcel but another courier company. It was eventually delivered a few weeks late with my other mail by... Auspost.

[draughtrider]

Currently experiencing the same problem as many others. USPS tracking shows my parcel apparently arrived in Sydney 2 weeks ago from Miami (despite the hurricane hitting Florida just after it had been mailed), and then zilch since.

For at least the last 8 years since I've lived remote, that has been consistently my experience with Australia Lost. USPS mail typically gets scanned every time someone in the US touches it - and it makes its way across the US as if Roger Ramjet himself is personally delivering it ... all the way to our shores, where it becomes almost invisible and seems to spend large amounts of time doing nothing in the way of "moving"....

I rang Auspost and the guy claimed it wasn't necessarily Auspost who would deliver the parcel but another courier company. It was eventually delivered a few weeks late with my other mail by... Auspost.

Random attempt at deflection by misinformation I'd suggest. Australia Lost do use contractors to deliver in some areas, but as such they are acting for and as Australia Lost ...

[Trajis]

Delighted that two weeks after arrival in Sydney, there was finally some movement on Sunday and finally delivered today... er, according to the tracking, that is. Alas, no parcel, nothing in my mailbox, no note, no one buzzed on the intercom (2 people indoors waiting for parcel). I rang Auspost to complain and somehow the postie had obtained a signature from a completely unknown name to me, and not even close to my name which is obviously on the parcel!
Also, asked about the two week delay, and the guy reckoned it didn't show on his tracking (the tracking record had actually mystifyingly changed from last week btw) and that the parcel arrived with Auspost in Sydney on Sydney. He thought USPS guess the location once it's left US shores and that was why the tracking had shown the parcel to be in Sydney. Except it doesn't take 2 weeks by plane to get here!

[TheBBG]

Tracking? This ends with good news. The tracked registered cheques were found bouncing around WA, and Auspost has a better than 98% (!!!) delivery rate. Even with the low volume of Rmail these days, almost 2% goes missing and they are apparently proud of it. Nothing seems too good for us.

‘The stress of the waiting was unbearable, I feared the worst’

[draughtrider]

Reads like a Monty Python sketch, as always.

“Australia Post takes great pride in the efficient delivery of mail, with the vast majority — over 98 per cent — arriving safely and on time,” the spokeswoman said.

Honestly they wouldn't know ... and of course nobody can prove otherwise.

“Obviously something has gone wrong here.

I have no experience sending/receiving money to/from other countries, but seriously, could it not be sent by electronic means? Wire transfer? SWIFT? Paypal even? Was someone trying to minimise loss through commission? Maybe even the Commonweath Bank could have facilitated the transfer and had the money laund(ahem)I mean cleaned en-route (humour alert, well attempted anyway) ...

This maybe? or a couple more ideas Here ...

“My Canadian lawyer advised that if this was the case, there was nothing they could do and we would have to accept the loss.

Seems there is more to the story - it would be interesting to see the address label as well. I am FAR from being an Australia Post apologist, but between them and the lawyer it seems like a perfect storm of clowns - clownado !

“We have contacted the customer and will investigate this further.”

Australia post have a very very very large portion of carpet they can deploy in seconds, under which they very efficiently sweep all problems while wearing earplugs and blinkers ...

[TheBBG]

could it not be sent by electronic means

"Ms Ruhland said the money had been sent in the form of bank drafts instead of an electronic transfer as she had been advised this was the best option."

What can be written about that advice?

“We have contacted the customer and will investigate this further.”

That means they rang the customer to see if she had the delivery. She replied no, and added that might be why she launched a missing item trace.

Now that she has the item the case is closed as another successful delivery. With that, nothing else need be done.